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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I. Of Progress and the Smallways Family . 

II. How Bert Smallways got into Difficulties 

III. The Balloon 

IV. The German Air-fleet 

V. The Battle of the North Atlantic 

VI. How War came to New York . 

VII. The “Vaterland” is Disabled 

VIII. A World at War 

IX. On Goat Island 

X. The World under the War . 

XI. The Great Collapse 

The Epilogue 


PAGE 

1 

33 

68 

97 

147 

179 

213 

246 

279 

323 

351 

376 


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THE WAR IN THE AIR 


















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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 


MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 


THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 





MAKE THEIR ATTACK 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


AND PARTICULARLY HOW MR. BERT 
SMALL WAYS EARED WHILE 
IT LASTED 


BY 


H. G. WELLS 


AUTHOR OP “ NEW WORLDS FOR OLD,” ETC., ETC. 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ERIC PAPE 



Nefo Jgflrk 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1908 


All rights reserved 


i i wo Cooies rtwivt* ..<■ 

ii OCT 20 l»OB 






Wt-ASte (j ex AACf *V ... 

i 

! COt^X £>< 

ju— «** - 


Copyright, 1907, 1908, 

i 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 


Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1908. 



Nortooob Press 

J. 8. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


“ A dozen single-man drachenflieger were swooping down 

to make their attack ” Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

“ ‘ This here Progress/ said Tom Smallways, ‘ it keeps on ’ ” 2 
“ ‘ When I was ’is age, I’d never been to London ’ ” . . 8 

Ballast!’ he cried, and seized a little sack from the 
floor and heaved it overboard ” 80 

“He was carried joggling and gaping through the twi- 
light, marvelling beyond measure ” . . .112 

“ A tall, bird-like young man with his hands full of things ” 1 14 

“ He surveyed Bert curiously ” 128 

“ The secretary regarded him with benevolent eyes ” . 136 

“ The sailors stood listening to the man with the helmet” 170 

“ The fires raged and the jets of water flew. Everywhere, 
too, were flagstaffs devoid of flags ; one white sheet 


drooped and flapped ” 190 

“ As the airships sailed along they smashed up the city as 

a child will shatter its cities of brick and card” . 204 

“ She came down in a collapsing heap ” 220 

“ The chances of battle and the weather had conspired to 

maroon him in Labrador ” 224 

“ Other flapping bird shapes came into this affair ”, .254 
“ With renewed uproar the others closed again ” . . 272 


« Then a boy appeared . . . but he would not understand 

Bert’s hail ” 306 

“ At one point ten dark-complexioned men were hanging 
in a string from the trees along the roadside ” . 
vii 


320 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


viii 


“ A field that had been ploughed and not sown 
“ Far away from the stream of events ” 

“ ‘ It's as still as the grave ’ ” 


FACING PAGE 

. 336 
. 342 
. 350 


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THE WAR IN THE AIR 








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THE WAR IN THE AIR 


CHAPTER I 

OF PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY 

§ 1 

“This here Progress,” said Mr. Tom Small- 
ways, “it keeps on. ' 

“You’d hardly think it could keep on,” said 
Mr. Tom Smallways. 

It was long before the War in the Air began that 
Mr. Smallways made this remark. He was sitting 
on the fence at the end of his garden and surveying 
the great Bun Hill gas-works with an eye that 
neither praised nor blamed. Above the clustering 
gasometers three unfamiliar shapes appeared, thin, 
wallowing bladders that flapped and rolled about, 
and grew bigger and bigger and rounder and 
rounder — balloons in course of inflation for the 
South of England Aero Club’s Saturday-after- 
noon ascent. 

“They goes up every Saturday,” said his 
neighbour, Mr. Stringer, the milkman. “It’s 
only yestiday, so to speak, when all London turned 
out to see a balloon go over, and now every little 
place in the country has its weekly outings — 


2 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


uppings, rather. It’s been the salvation of them 
gas companies.” 

“Larst Satiday I got three barrer-loads of gravel 
off my petaters,” said Mr. Tom Smallways. 
“Three barrer-loads! What they dropped as 
ballase. Some of the plants was broke, and some 
was buried.” 

“Ladies, they say, goes up !” 

“I suppose we got to call ’em ladies,” said Mr. 
Tom Smallways. “Still, it ain’t hardly my 
idea of a lady — flying about in the air, and throw- 
ing gravel at people. It ain’t what I been accus- 
tomed to consider ladylike, whether or no.” 

Mr. Stringer nodded his head approvingly, 
and for a time they continued to regard the swell- 
ing bulks with expressions that had changed 
from indifference to disapproval. 

Mr. Tom Smallways was a greengrocer by trade 
and a gardener by disposition; his little wife 
Jessica saw to the shop, and Heaven had planned 
him for a peaceful world. Unfortunately Heaven 
had not planned a peaceful world for him. He 
lived in a world of obstinate and incessant change, 
and in parts where its operations were unsparingly 
conspicuous. Vicissitude was in the very soil he 
tilled ; even his garden was upon a yearly tenancy, 
and overshadowed by a huge board that proclaimed 
it not so much a garden as an eligible building site. 
He was horticulture under notice to quit, the last 
patch of country in a district flooded by new and 
urban things. He did his best to console himself, 
to imagine matters near the turn of the tide. 

“You’d hardly think it could keep on,” he said. 













PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY 3 


Mr. Small ways’ aged father could remember 
Bun Hill as an idyllic Kentish village. He had 
driven Sir Peter Bone until he was fifty, and then 
he took to drink a little, and driving the station 
bus, which lasted him until he was seventy-eight. 
Then he retired. He sat by the fireside, a shriv- 
elled, very, very old coachman, full charged 
with reminiscences, and ready for any careless 
stranger. He could tell you of the vanished estate 
of Sir Peter Bone, long since cut up for building, 
and how that magnate ruled the country-side when 
it was country-side, of shooting and hunting, and 
of coaches along the high road, of how “ where the 
gas-works is” was a cricket-field, and of the com- 
ing of the Crystal Palace. The Crystal Palace 
was six miles away from Bun Hill, a great fagade 
that glittered in the morning, and was a clear blue 
outline against the sky in the afternoon, and of a 
night a source of gratuitous fireworks for all the 
population of Bun Hill. And then had come the 
railway, and then villas and villas, and then the 
gas-works and the water-works, and a great ugly 
sea of workmen’s houses, and then drainage, and 
the water vanished out of the Otterbourne and 
left it a dreadful ditch, and then a second railway 
station, Bun Hill South, and more houses and more, 
more shops, more competition, plate-glass shops, a 
school-board, rates, omnibuses, tramcars — going 
right away into London itself — bicycles, motor-cars 
and then more motor-cars, a Carnegie library. 

“ You’d hardly think it could keep on,” said Mr. 
Tom Smallways, growing up among these marvels. 

But it kept on. Even from the first the green- 


4 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


grocer’s shop which he had set up in one of the 
smallest of the old surviving village houses in the 
tail of the High Street had a submerged air, an 
air of hiding from something that was looking 
for it. When they had made up the pavement of 
the High Street, they levelled that up so that one 
had to go down three steps into the shop. Tom 
did his best to sell only his own excellent but 
limited range of produce; but Progress came 
shoving things into his window, French artichokes 
and aubergines, foreign apples — apples from the 
State of New York, apples from California, apples 
from Canada, apples from New Zealand, “ pretty 
lookin’ fruit, but not what I should call English 
apples,” said Tom — bananas, unfamiliar nuts, 
grape fruits, mangoes. 

The motor-cars that went by northward and 
southward grew more and more powerful and 
efficient, whizzed faster and smelt worse, there 
appeared great clangorous petrol trolleys delivering 
coal and parcels in the place of vanishing horse- 
vans, motor-omnibuses ousted the horse-omni- 
buses, even the Kentish strawberries going 
Londonward in the night took to machinery and 
clattered instead of creaking, and became affected 
in flavour by progress and petrol. 

And then young Bert Smallways got a motor 
bicycle. . . . 

§2 

Bert, it is necessary to explain, was a progressive 
Smallways. 

Nothing speaks more eloquently of the pitiless 


PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY 5 


insistence of progress and expansion in our time 
than that it should get into the Smallways blood. 
But there was something advanced and enter- 
prising about young Smallways before he was out 
of short frocks. He was lost for a whole day 
before he was five, and nearly drowned in the 
reservoir of the new water-works before he was 
seven. He had a real pistol taken away from 
him by a real policeman when he was ten. And 
he learnt to smoke, not with pipes and brown 
paper and cane as Tom had done, but with a 
penny packet of Boys of England American 
cigarettes. His language shocked his father be- 
fore he was twelve, and by that age, what with 
touting for parcels at the station and selling the 
Bun Hill Weekly Express , he was making three 
shillings a week, or more, and spending it on 
Chips , Comic Cuts, Ally Eloper’s Half-holiday, 
cigarettes, and all the concomitants of a life 
of pleasure and enlightenment. All of this 
without hindrance to his literary studies, which 
carried him up to the seventh standard at an 
exceptionally early age. I mention these things 
so that you may have no doubt at all concerning 
the sort of stuff Bert had in him. 

He was six years younger than Tom, and for 
a time there was an attempt to utilise him in the 
greengrocer’s shop when Tom at twenty-one 
married Jessica — who was thirty, and had 
saved a little money in service. But it was not 
Bert’s forte to be utilised. He hated digging, 
and when he was given a basket of stuff to deliver, 
a nomadic instinct arose irresistibly, it became 


6 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


his pack, and he did not seem to care how heavy 
it was nor where he took it, so long as he did not 
take it to its destination. Glamour filled the 
world, and he strayed after it, basket and all. 
So Tom took his goods out himself, and sought 
employers for Bert who did not know of this 
strain of poetry in his nature. And Bert touched 
the fringe of a number of trades in succession — 
draper’s porter, chemist’s boy, doctor’s page, 
junior assistant gas-fitter, envelope addresser, 
milk-cart assistant, golf caddie, and at last helper 
in a bicycle shop. Here, apparently, he found the 
progressive quality his nature had craved. His 
employer was a pirate-souled young man named 
Grubb, with a black-smeared face by day, and 
a music-hall side in the evening, who dreamt of a 
patent lever chain ; and it seemed to Bert that he 
was the perfect model of a gentleman of spirit. 
He hired out quite the dirtiest and unsafest 
bicycles in the whole south of England, and con- 
ducted the subsequent discussions with astonish- 
ing verve. Bert and he settled down very well 
together. Bert lived in, became almost a trick 
rider — he could ride bicycles for miles that would 
have come to pieces instantly under you or me — 
took to washing his face after business, and spent 
his surplus money upon remarkable ties and 
collars, cigarettes, and shorthand classes at the 
Bun Hill Institute. 

He would go round to Tom at times, and look and 
talk so brilliantly that Tom and Jessie, who both 
had a natural tendency to be respectful to any- 
body or anything, looked up to him immensely. 


PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY 7 


“He’s a go-ahead chap, is Bert,” said Tom. 
“He knows a thing or two.” 

“Let’s hope he don’t know too much,” said 
Jessica, who had a fine sense of limitations. 

“It’s go-ahead Times,” said Tom. “Noo peta- 
ters, and English at that; we’ll be having ’em 
in March if things go on as they do go. I never 
see such Times. See his tie last night?” 

“It wasn’t suited to him, Tom. It was a 
gentleman’s tie. He wasn’t up to it — not the 
rest of him. It wasn’t becoming.” . . . 

Then presently Bert got a cyclist’s suit, cap, 
badge, and all; and to see him and Grubb going 
down to Brighton (and back) — heads down, 
handle-bars down, backbones curved — was a 
revelation in the possibilities of the Smallways 
blood. 

Go-ahead Times ! 

Old Smallways would sit over the fire mumbling 
of the greatness of other days, of old Sir Peter, 
who drove his coach to Brighton and back in 
eight-and-twenty hours, of old Sir Peter’s white 
top-hats, of Lady Bone, who never set foot to 
ground except to walk in the garden, of the great 
prize-fights at Crawley. He talked of pink and 
pig-skin breeches, of foxes at Ring’s Bottom, 
where now the County Council pauper lunatics 
were enclosed, of Lady Bone’s chintzes and 
crinolines. Nobody heeded him. The world had 
thrown up a new type of gentleman altogether 
— a gentleman of most ungentlemanly energy, 
a gentleman in dusty oilskins and motor goggles 
and a wonderful cap, a stink-making gentleman, 


8 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


a swift, high-class badger, who fled perpetually 
along high roads from the dust and stink he per- 
petually made. And his lady, as they were able 
to see her at Bun Hill, was a weather-bitten god- 
dess, as free from refinement as a gipsy — not 
so much dressed as packed for transit at a high 
velocity. 

So Bert grew up, filled with ideals of speed and 
enterprise, and became, so far as he became 
anything, a kind of bicycle engineer of the let’s- 
’ave-a-look-at-it and enamel chipping variety. 
Even a road-racer, geared to a hundred and 
twenty, failed to satisfy him, and for a time he 
pined in vain at twenty miles an hour along roads 
that were continually more dusty and more 
crowded with mechanical traffic. But at last his 
savings accumulated, and his chance came. 
The hire-purchase system bridged a financial 
gap, and one bright and memorable Sunday 
morning he wheeled his new possession through 
the shop into the road, got on to it with the advice 
and assistance of Grubb, and teuf-teuffed off into 
the haze of the traffic-tortured high road, to add 
himself as one more voluntary public danger to 
the amenities of the south of England. 

“Orf to Brighton !” said old Smallways, re- 
garding his youngest son from the sitting-room 
window over the green-grocer’s shop with some- 
thing between pride and reprobation. “When 
I was ’is age, I’d never been to London, never bin 
south of Crawley — never bin anywhere on my 
own where I couldn’t walk. And nobody didn’t 
go. Not unless they was gentry. Now every- 



“‘When I was ’is age, I’d never been to London’” 





PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY 9 


body’s orf everywhere ; the whole dratted country 
sims flying to pieces. Wonder they all get back. 
Orf to Brighton indeed! Anybody want to buy 
'orses?" 

“You can't say I bin to Brighton, father," 
said Tom. 

“Nor don't want to go," said Jessica sharply; 
“creering about and spendin' your money." 


§ 3 

For a time the possibilities of the motor- 
bicycle so occupied Bert's mind that he remained 
regardless of the new direction in which the 
striving soul of man was finding exercise and re- 
freshment. He failed to observe that the type of 
motor-car, like the type of bicycle, was settling 
down and losing its adventurous quality. In- 
deed, it is as true as it is remarkable that Tom 
was the first to observe the new development. 
But his gardening made him attentive to the 
heavens, and the proximity of the Bun Hill gas- 
works and the Crystal Palace, from which ascents 
were continually being made, and presently the 
descent of ballast upon his potatoes, conspired to 
bear in upon his unwilling mind the fact that the 
Goddess of Change was turning her disturbing 
attention to the sky. The first great boom in 
aeronautics was beginning. 

Grubb and Bert heard of it in a music-hall, 
then it was driven home to their minds by the 
cinematograph, then Bert's imagination was 
stimulated by a sixpenny edition of that aero- 


10 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


nautic classic, Mr. George Griffith’s u Clipper of 
the Clouds/’ and so the thing really got hold of 
them. 

At first the most obvious aspect was the mul- 
tiplication of balloons. The sky of Bun Hill 
began to be infested by balloons. On Wednes- 
day and Saturday afternoons particularly you 
could scarcely look skyward for a quarter of an 
hour without discovering a balloon somewhere. 
And then one bright day Bert, motoring towards 
Croydon, was arrested by the insurgence of a 
huge, bolster-shaped monster from the Crystal 
Palace grounds, and obliged to dismount and 
watch it. It was like a bolster with a broken 
nose, and below it, and comparatively small, was 
a stiff framework bearing a man and an engine 
with a screw that whizzed round in front and a 
sort of canvas rudder behind. The framework 
had an air of dragging the reluctant gas-cylinder 
after it like a brisk little terrier towing a shy, 
gas-distended elephant into society. The com- 
bined monster certainly travelled and steered. 
It went overhead perhaps a thousand feet up 
(Bert heard the engine), sailed away southward, 
vanished over the hills, reappeared a little blue 
outline far off in the east, going now very fast 
before a gentle south-west gale, returned above 
the Crystal Palace towers, circled round them, 
chose a position for descent, and sank down out 
of sight. 

Bert sighed deeply, and turned to his motor- 
bicycle again. 

And that was only the beginning of a succes- 


PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY 11 


sion of strange phenomena in the heavens — 
cylinders, cones, pear-shaped monsters, even at 
last a thing of aluminium that glittered wonder- 
fully, and that Grubb, through some confusion of 
ideas about armour plates, was inclined to con- 
sider a war machine. 

There followed actual flight. 

This, however, was not an affair that was 
visible from Bun Hill; it was something that 
occurred in private grounds or other enclosed 
places and under favourable conditions, and it 
was brought home to Grubb and Bert Smallways 
only by means of the magazine page of the half- 
penny newspapers or by cinematograph records. 
But it was brought home very insistently, and in 
those days if ever one heard a man saying in a 
public place in a loud, reassuring, confident 
tone, “It's bound to come," the chances were 
ten to one he was talking of flying. And Bert 
got a box lid and wrote out in correct window- 
ticket style, and Grubb put in the window this 
inscription, “Aeroplanes made and repaired." It 
quite upset Tom — it seemed taking one's shop 
so lightly; but most of the neighbours, and all 
the sporting ones, approved of it as being very 
good, indeed. 

^Everybody talked of flying, everybody re- 
peated over and over again, “Bound to come," 
and then you know it didn't come. There was a 
hitch. They flew — that was all right ; they 
flew in machines heavier than air. But they 
smashed. Sometimes they smashed the engine, 
sometimes they smashed the aeronaut, usually 


12 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


they smashed both. Machines that made flights 
of three or four miles and came down safely, 
went up the next time to headlong disaster. 
There seemed no possible trusting to them. The 
breeze upset them, the eddies near the ground up- 
set them, a passing thought in the mind of the 
aeronaut upset them. Also they upset — simply. 

“It’s this 1 stability’ does ’em,” said Grubb, 
repeating his newspaper. “They pitch and they 
pitch, till they pitch themselves to pieces.” / 

Experiments fell away after two expectant 
years of this sort of success, the public and then 
the newspapers tired of the expensive photo- 
graphic reproductions, the optimistic reports, the 
perpetual sequence of triumph and^ disaster and 
silence. Flying slumped, even ballooning fell 
away to some extent, though it remained a fairly 
popular sport, and continued to lift gravel from 
the wharf of the Bun Hill gas-works and drop it 
upon deserving people’s lawns and gardens. 
There were half a dozen reassuring years for 
Tom — at least so far as flying was concerned. 
But that was the great time of mono-rail develop- 
ment, and his anxiety was only diverted from the 
high heavens by the most urgent threats and 
symptoms of change in the lower sky. 

There had been talk of mono-rails for several 
years. But the real mischief began when Brennan 
sprang his gyroscopic mono-rail car upon the 
Royal Society. It was the leading sensation of 
the 1907 soirees; that celebrated demonstration- 
room was all too small for its exhibition. Brave 
soldiers, leading Zionists, deserving novelists, 


PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY 13 


noble ladies, congested the narrow passage, and 
thrust distinguished elbows into ribs the world 
would not willingly let break, deeming them- 
selves fortunate if they could see “just a little 
bit of the rail.” Inaudible, but convincing, the 
great inventor expounded his discovery, and sent 
his obedient little model of the trains of the 
future up gradients, round curves, and across a 
sagging wire. It ran along on its single rail, on 
its single wheels, simple and sufficient ; it stopped, 
reversed, stood still, balancing perfectly. It main- 
tained its astounding equilibrium amidst a thun- 
der of applause. The audience dispersed at last, 
discussing how far they would enjoy crossing an 
abyss on a wire cable. “Suppose the gyroscope 
stopped!” Few of them anticipated a tithe of 
what the Brennan mono-rail would do for their 
railway securities and the face of the world. 

In a few years they realised better. In a little 
while no one thought anything of crossing an 
abyss on a wire, and the mono-rail was super- 
seding the tram-lines, railways, and indeed every 
form of track for mechanical locomotion. Where 
land was cheap the rail ran along the ground, 
where it was dear the rail lifted up on iron stand- 
ards and passed overhead; its swift, convenient 
cars went everywhere and did everything that had 
once been done along made tracks upon the ground. 

When old Smallways died, Tom could think of 
nothing more striking to say of him than that, 
“When he was a boy, there wasn’t nothing higher 
than your chimbleys — there wasn’t a wire nor a 
cable in the sky!” 


14 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


Old Smallways went to his grave under an in- 
tricate network of wires and cables, for Bun Hill 
became not only a sort of minor centre of power 
distribution — the Home Counties Power Dis- 
tribution Company set up transformers and a 
generating station close beside the old gas-works 
— but also a junction on the suburban mono-rail 
system. Moreover, every tradesman in the place, 
and indeed nearly every house, had its own tele- 
phone. 

The mono-rail cable standards became a strik- 
ing fact in urban landscape, for the most part 
stout iron erections rather like tapering trestles, 
and painted a bright bluish green. One, it 
happened, bestrode Tom’s house, which looked 
still more retiring and apologetic beneath its 
immensity; and another giant stood just inside 
the corner of his garden, which was still not built 
upon and unchanged, except for a couple of ad- 
vertisement boards, one recommending a two- 
and-sixpenny watch, and one a nerve restorer. 
These, by the bye, were placed almost horizon- 
tally to catch the eye of the passing mono-rail 
passengers above, and so served admirably to roof 
over a tool-shed and a mushroom-shed for Tom. 
All day and all night the fast cars from Brighton 
and Hastings went murmuring by overhead — 
long, broad, comfortable-looking cars, that were 
brightly lit after dusk. As they flew by at night, 
transient flares of light and a rumbling sound 
of passage, they kept up a perpetual summer 
lightning and thunderstorm in the street below. 

Presently the English Channel was bridged — 


PROGRESS AND THE SMALL WAYS FAMILY 15 


a series of great iron Eiffel Tower pillars carrying 
mono-rail cables at a height of a hundred and 
fifty feet above the water, except near the middle, 
where they rose higher to allow the passage of the 
London and Antwerp shipping and the Ham- 
burg- America liners. 

Then heavy motor-cars began to run about on 
only a couple of wheels, one behind the other, 
which for some reason upset Tom dreadfully, 
and made him gloomy for days after the first one 
passed the shop. . . . 

All this gyroscopic and mono-rail development 
naturally absorbed a vast amount of public at- 
tention, and there was also a huge excitement con- 
sequent upon the amazing gold discoveries off 
the coast of Anglesea made by a submarine pros- 
pector, Miss Patricia Giddy. She had taken her 
degree in geology and mineralogy in the University 
of London, and while working upon the aurif- 
erous rocks of North Wales, after a brief holiday 
spent in agitating for women’s suffrage, she had 
been struck by the possibility of these reefs 
cropping up again under the water. She had set 
herself to verify this supposition by the use of the 
submarine crawler invented by Doctor Alberto 
Cassini. By a happy mingling of reasoning and 
intuition peculiar to her sex she found gold at 
her first descent, and emerged after three hours’ 
submersion with about two hundredweight of 
ore containing gold in the unparalleled quantity of 
seventeen ounces to the ton. But the whole story 
of her submarine mining, intensely interesting 
as it is, must be told at some other time ; suffice it 


16 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


now to remark simply that it was during the con- 
sequent great rise of prices, confidence, and enter- 
prise that the revival of interest in flying 
occurred. 


§ 4 

It is curious how that revival began. It was 
like the coming of a breeze on a quiet day ; nothing 
started it, it came. People began to talk of 
flying with an air of never having for one moment 
dropped the subject. Pictures of flying and 
flying machines returned to the newspapers ; 
articles and allusions increased and multiplied 
in the serious magazines. People asked in mono- 
rail trains, “When are we going to fly?” A 
new crop of inventors sprang up in a night or 
so like fungi. The Aero Club announced the 
project of a great Flying Exhibition in a large 
area of ground that the removal of slums in 
Whitechapel had rendered available. 

The advancing wave soon produced a sym- 
pathetic ripple in the Bun Hill establishment. 
Grubb routed out his flying-machine model again, 
tried it in the yard behind the shop, got a kind 
of flight out of it, and broke seventeen panes of 
glass and nine flower-pots in the greenhouse that 
occupied the next yard but one. 

And then, springing from nowhere, sustained 
one knew not how, came a persistent, disturbing 
rumour that the problem had been solved, that 
the secret was known. Bert met it one early- 
closing afternoon as he refreshed himself in an 


PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY 17 

inn near Nutfield, whither his motor-bicycle had 
brought him. There smoked and meditated a 
person in khaki, an engineer, who presently 
took an interest in Bert’s machine. It was a 
sturdy piece of apparatus, and it had acquired 
a kind of documentary value in these quick- 
changing times; it was now nearly eight years 
old. Its points discussed, the soldier broke 
into a new topic with, “My next’s going to be 
an aeroplane, so far as I can see. I’ve had enough 
of roads and ways.” 

“They tork,” said Bert. 

“They talk — and they do,” said the soldier. 
“The thing’s coming.” 

“It keeps on coming,” said Bert; “I shall 
believe when I see it.” 

“That won’t be long,” said the soldier. 

The conversation seemed degenerating into 
an amiable wrangle of contradiction. 

“I tell you they are flying,” the soldier in- 
sisted. “I see it myself.” 

“We’ve all seen it,” said Bert. 

“I don’t mean flap up and smash up; I mean 
real, safe, steady, controlled flying, against the 
wind, good and right.” 

“You ain’t seen that !” 

“I ’ave! Aldershot. They try to keep it a 
secret. They got it right enough. You bet — 
our War Office isn’t going to be caught napping 
this time.” 

Bert’s incredulity was shaken. He asked ques- 
tions, and the soldier expanded. 

“I tell you they got nearly a square mile 


18 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


fenced in — a sort of valley. Fences of barbed 
wire ten feet high, and inside that they do things. 
Chaps about the camp — now and then we get a 
peep. It isn’t only us neither. There’s the 
Japanese ; you bet they got it too — and the 
Germans !” 

The soldier stood with his legs very wide 
apart, and filled his pipe thoughtfully. Bert sat 
on the low wall against which his motor-bicycle 
was leaning. 

“ Funny thing fighting’ll be,” he said. 

“ Flying’s going to break out,” said the sol- 
dier. “When it does come, when the curtain 
does go up, I tell you you’ll find every one on 
the stage — busy. . . . Such fighting, too ! . . . 
I suppose you don’t read the papers about this 
sort of thing?” 

“I read ’em a bit,” said Bert. 

“Well, have you noticed what one might call 
the remarkable case of the disappearing inventor 
— the inventor who turns up in a blaze of pub- 
licity, fires off a few successful experiments, and 
vanishes?” 

“Can’t say I ’ave,” said Bert. 

“Well, I ’ave, anyhow. You get anybody 
come along who does anything striking in this 
line, and, you bet, he vanishes. Just goes off 
quietly out of sight. After a bit, you don’t hear 
anything more of ’em at all. See? They dis- 
appear. Gone — no address. First — oh ! it’s 
an old story now — there was those Wright 
Brothers out in America. They glided — they 
glided miles and miles. Finally they glided off 


PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY 19 


stage. Why, it must be nineteen hundred and 
four, or five, they vanished ! Then there was 
those people in Ireland — no, I forget their 
names. Everybody said they could fly. They 
went. They ain't dead that I've heard tell ; but 
you can't say they're alive. Not a feather of 'em 
can you see. Then that chap who flew round 
Paris and upset in the Seine. De Booley, was 
it? I forget. That was a grand fly, in spite of 
the accident ; but where's he. got to ? The acci- 
dent didn't hurt him. Eh? 'i£'s gone to cover." 

The soldier prepared to light his pipe. 

“ Looks like a secret society got hold of them," 
said Bert. 

“ Secret society ! Naw!” 

The soldier lit his match, and drew. “ Secret 
society," he repeated, with his pipe between his 
teeth and the match flaring, in response to his 
words. “War Departments; that's more like it." 
He threw his match aside, and walked to his 
machine. “I tell you, sir," he said, “there isn't 
a big Power in Europe, or Asia, or America, or 
Africa, that hasn't got at least one or two flying 
machines hidden up its sleeve at the present 
time. Not one. Real, workable, flying ma- 
chines. And the spying ! The spying and 
manoeuvring to find out what the others have 
got. I tell you, sir, a foreigner, or, for the matter 
of that, an unaccredited native, can't get within 
four miles of Lydd nowadays — not to mention 
our little circus at Aldershot, and the experi- 
mental camp in Galway. No!" 

“Well," said Bert, “I'd like to see one of 


20 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


them, anyhow. Jest to help believing. I’ll be- 
lieve when I see, that I’ll promise you.” 

“You’ll see ’em, fast enough,” said the soldier, 
and led his machine out into the road. 

He left Bert on his wall, grave and pensive, 
with his cap on the back of his head, and a cig- 
arette smouldering in the corner of his mouth. 

“If what he says is true,” said Bert, “me 
and Grubb, we been wasting our blessed old 
time. Besides incurring expense with thet green- 
’ouse.” 


§ 5 

It was while this mysterious talk with the 
soldier still stirred in Bert Smallways’ imagina- 
tion that the most astounding incident in the 
whole of that dramatic chapter of human history, 
the coming of flying, occurred. People talk 
glibly enough of epoch-making events ; this 
was an epoch-making event. It was the un- 
anticipated and entirely successful flight of Mr. 
Alfred Butteridge from the Crystal Palace to 
Glasgow and back in a small businesslike-looking 
machine heavier than air — an entirely manage- 
able and controllable machine that could fly as 
well as a pigeon. 

It wasn’t, one felt, a fresh step forward in the 
matter so much as a giant stride, a leap. Mr. 
Butteridge remained in the air altogether for 
about nine hours, and during that time he flew 
with the ease and assurance of a bird. His ma- 
chine was, however, neither bird-like nor butter- 
fly-like, nor had it the wide, lateral expansion of 


PROGRESS AND THE SMALL WAYS FAMILY 21 


the ordinary aeroplane. The effect upon the 
observer was rather something in the nature of a 
bee or wasp. Parts of the apparatus were spin- 
ning very rapidly, and gave one a hazy effect of 
transparent wings; but parts, including two 
peculiarly curved “wing-cases” — if one may 
borrow a figure from the flying beetles — re- 
mained expanded stiffly. In the middle was a 
long rounded body like the body of a moth, and 
on this Mr. Butteridge could be seen sitting 
astride, much as a man bestrides a horse. The 
wasp-like resemblance was increased by the fact 
that the apparatus flew with a deep booming 
hum, exactly the sound made by a wasp at a 
window-pane. 

Mr. Butteridge took the world by surprise. 
He was one of those gentlemen from nowhere 
Fate still succeeds in producing for the stimu- 
lation of mankind. He came, it was variously 
said, from Australia and America and the South 
of France. He was also described quite incor- 
rectly as the son of a man who had amassed a 
comfortable fortune in the manufacture of gold 
nibs and the Butteridge fountain pens. But this 
was an entirely different strain of Butteridges. 
For some years, in spite of a loud voice, a large 
presence, an aggressive swagger, and an implac- 
able manner, he had been an undistinguished 
member of most of the existing aeronautical 
associations. Then one day he wrote to all the 
London papers to announce that he had made 
arrangements for an ascent from the Crystal 
Palace of a machine that would demonstrate 


22 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


satisfactorily that the outstanding difficulties in 
the way of flying were finally solved. Few of 
the papers printed his letter, still fewer were the 
people who believed in his claim. No one was 
excited even when a fracas on the steps of a 
leading hotel in Piccadilly, in which he tried to 
horse-whip a prominent German musician upon 
some personal account, delayed his promised 
ascent. The quarrel was inadequately reported, 
and his name spelt variously Betteridge and 
Betridge. Until his flight indeed, he did not and 
could not contrive to exist in the public mind. 
There were scarcely thirty people on the look- 
out for him, in spite of all his clamour, when about 
six o’clock one summer morning the doors of the 
big shed in which he had been putting together 
his apparatus opened — it was near the big model 
of a megatherium in the Crystal Palace grounds 
— and his giant insect came droning out into a 
negligent and incredulous world. 

But before he had made his second circuit of 
the Crystal Palace towers, Fame was lifting her 
trumpet, she drew a deep breath as the startled 
tramps who sleep on the seats of Trafalgar Square 
were roused by his buzz and awoke to discover 
him circling the Nelson column, and by the time 
he had got to Birmingham, which place he crossed 
about half-past ten, her deafening blast was 
echoing throughout the country. The despaired- 
of thing was done. A man was flying securely 
and well. 

Scotland was agape for his coming. Glasgow 
he reached by one o’clock, and it is related that 


PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY 23 


scarcely a ship-yard or factory in that busy hive 
of industry resumed work before half-past two. 
The public mind was just sufficiently educated 
in the impossibility of flying to appreciate Mr. 
Butteridge at his proper value. He circled the 
University buildings, and dropped to within 
shouting distance of the crowds in West End Park 
and on the slope of Gilmorehill. The thing 
flew quite steadily at a pace of about three miles 
an hour, in a wide circle, making a deep hum 
that would have drowned his full, rich voice 
completely had he not provided himself with a 
megaphone. He avoided churches, buildings, 
and mono-rail cables with consummate ease as he 
conversed. 

“Me name’s Butteridge, ” he shouted; “B-U-T- 
T-E-R-I-D-G-E. Got it? Me mother was 
Scotch.” 

And having assured himself that he had been 
understood, he rose amidst cheers and shouting 
and patriotic cries, and then flew up very swiftly 
and easily into the south-eastern sky, rising and 
falling with long, easy undulations in an ex- 
traordinarily wasp-like manner. 

His return to London — he visited and hovered 
over Manchester and Liverpool and Oxford on his 
way, and spelt his name out to each place — was 
an occasion of unparalleled excitement. Every 
one was staring heavenward. More people were 
run over in the streets upon that one day than 
in the previous three months, and a County Coun- 
cil steamboat, the Isaac W alton, collided with a 
pier of Westminster Bridge, and narrowly escaped 


24 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


disaster by running ashore — it was low water — 
on the mud on the south side. He returned to 
the Crystal Palace grounds, that classic starting- 
point of aeronautical adventure, about sunset, 
re-entered his shed without disaster, and had the 
doors locked immediately upon the photographers 
and journalists who had been waiting his return. 

“Look here, you chaps,” he said, as his as- 
sistant did so, “I’m tired to death, and saddle 
sore. I can’t give you a word of talk. I’m too 
— done. My name’s Butteridge. B-U-T-T-E-R- 
I-D-G-E. Get that right. I’m an Imperial 
Englishman. I’ll talk to you all to-morrow.” 

Foggy snapshots still survive to record that 
incident. His assistant struggles in a sea of 
aggressive young men carrying note-books or 
upholding cameras and wearing bowler hats and 
enterprising ties. He himself towers up in the 
doorway, a big figure with a mouth — an eloquent 
cavity beneath a vast black moustache — dis- 
torted by his shout to these relentless agents of 
publicity. He towers there, the most famous 
man in the country. Almost symbolically he 
holds and gesticulates with a megaphone in his 
left hand. 

§ 6 

Tom and Bert Smallways both saw that return. 
They watched from the crest of Bun Hill, from 
which they had so often surveyed the pyrotech- 
nics of the Crystal Palace. Bert was excited, 
Tom kept calm and lumpish, but neither of them 
realised how their own lives were to be invaded 


PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY 25 


by the fruits of that beginning. “P'raps old 
Grubb’ll mind the shop a bit now/' he said, 
“and put his blessed model in the fire. Not 
that that can save us, if we don't tide over with 
Steinhart's account." 

Bert knew enough of things and the problem 
of aeronautics to realise that this gigantic imitation 
of a bee would, to use his own idiom, “give the 
newspapers fits." The next day it was clear 
the fits had been given even as he said: their 
magazine pages were black with hasty photo- 
graphs, their prose was convulsive, they foamed 
at the headline. The next day they were worse. 
Before the week was out they were not so much 
published as carried screaming into the street. 

The dominant fact in the uproar was the ex- 
ceptional personality of Mr. Butteridge, and the 
extraordinary terms he demanded for the secret 
of his machine. 

For it was a secret, and he kept it secret in the 
most elaborate fashion. He built his apparatus 
himself, in the safe privacy of the great Crystal 
Palace sheds, with the assistance of inattentive 
workmen, and the day next following his flight 
he took it to pieces single handed, packed certain 
portions, and then secured unintelligent assistance 
in packing and dispersing the rest. Sealed pack- 
ing-cases went north and east and west to various 
pantechnicons, and the engines were boxed with 
peculiar care. It became evident these precau- 
tions were not inadvisable in view of the violent 
demand for any sort of photograph or impres- 
sions of his machine. But Mr. Butteridge, having 


26 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


once made his demonstration, intended to keep 
his secret safe from any further risk of leakage. 
He faced the British public now with the question 
whether they wanted his secret or not; he was, 
he said perpetually, an “ Imperial Englishman,” 
and his first wish and his last was to see his in- 
vention the privilege and monopoly of the Empire. 
Only 

It was there the difficulty began. 

Mr. Butteridge, it became evident, was a man 
singularly free from any false modesty — indeed, 
from any modesty of any kind — singularly 
willing to see interviewers, answer questions upon 
any topic except aeronautics, volunteer opinions, 
criticisms, and autobiography, supply portraits 
and photographs of himself, and generally spread 
his personality across the terrestrial sky. The 
published portraits insisted primarily upon an 
immense black moustache, and secondarily upon 
a fierceness behind the moustache. The gen- 
eral impression upon the public was that But- 
teridge was a small man. No one big, it was felt, 
could have so virulently aggressive an expression, 
though, as a matter of fact, Butteridge had a 
height of six feet two inches, and a weight alto- 
gether proportionate to that. Moreover, he had 
a love affair of large and unusual dimensions and 
irregular circumstances, and the still largely 
decorous British public learnt with reluctance 
and alarm that a sympathetic treatment of this 
affair was inseparable from the exclusive ac- 
quisition of the priceless secret of aerial stability 
by the British Empire. The exact particulars 


PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS* FAMILY 27 


of the irregularity never came to light, but ap- 
parently the lady had, in a fit of high-minded 
inadvertence, gone through the ceremony of 
marriage with — one quotes the unpublished 
discourse of Mr. Butteridge — “a white-livered 
skunk,” and this zoological aberration did in some 
legal and vexatious manner mar her social happi- 
ness. He wanted to talk about the business, 
to show the splendour of her nature in the light 
of its complications. It was really most em- 
barrassing to a press that has always possessed 
a considerable turn for reticence, that wanted 
things personal indeed in the modern fashion, 
but not too personal. It was embarrassing, I 
say, to be inexorably confronted with Mr. But- 
teridge’s great heart, to see it laid open in relent- 
less self-vivisection, and its pulsating dissepi- 
ments adorned with emphatic flag labels. 

Confronted they were, and there was no getting 
away from it. He would make this appalling 
viscus beat and throb before the shrinking jour- 
nalists — no uncle with a big watch and a little 
baby ever harped upon it so relentlessly; what- 
ever evasion they attempted he set aside. He 
“ gloried in his love,” he said, and compelled 
them to write it down. 

“That’s of course a private affair, Mr. But- 
teridge,” they would object. 

“The injustice, sorr, is public. I do not care 
whether I am up against institutions or indi- 
viduals. I do not care if I am up against the 
Universal All. I am pleading the cause of a 
woman, a woman I lurve, sorr — a noble woman 


28 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


— misunderstood. I intend to vindicate her, 
sorr, to the four winds of heaven !” 

“I lurve England,” he used to say — “I lurve 
England, but Puritanism, sorr, I abhor. It fills 
me with loathing. It raises my gorge. Take 
my own case.” 

He insisted relentlessly upon his heart, and 
upon seeing proofs of the interview. If they 
had not done justice to his erotic bello wings and 
gesticulations, he stuck in, in a large inky 
scrawl, all and more than they had omitted. 

It was a strangely embarrassing thing for 
British journalism. Never was there a more 
obvious or uninteresting affair; never had the 
world heard the story of erratic affection with 
less appetite or sympathy. On the other hand 
it was extremely curious about Mr. Butteridge's 
invention. But when Mr. Butteridge could be 
deflected for a moment from the cause of the 
lady he championed, then he talked chiefly, 
and usually with tears of tenderness in his voice, 
about his mother and his childhood — his mother 
who crowned a complete encyclopaedia of ma- 
ternal virtue by being “largely Scotch.” She 
was not quite neat, but nearly so. “I owe every- 
thing in me to me mother,” he asserted — “every- 
thing. Eh!” and — “ask any man who's done 
anything. You'll hear the same story. All we 
have we owe to women. They are the species, 
sorr. Man is but a dream. He comes and goes. 
The woman’s soul leadeth us upward and on!” 

He was always going on like that. 

What in particular he wanted from the Gov- 


PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY 29 


ernment for his secret did not appear, nor what 
beyond a money payment could be expected 
from a modern state in such an affair. The gen- 
eral effect upon judicious observers, indeed, was 
not that he was treating for anything, but that 
he was using an unexampled opportunity to 
bellow and show off to an attentive world. Ru- 
mours of his real identity spread abroad. It was 
said that he had been the landlord of an am- 
biguous hotel in Cape Town, and had there given 
shelter to, and witnessed the experiments and 
finally stolen the papers and plans of, an extremely 
shy and friendless young inventor named Pal- 
liser, who had come to South Africa from Eng- 
land in an advanced stage of consumption, and 
died there. This, at any rate, was the allegation 
of the more outspoken American press. But 
the proof or disproof of that never reached the 
public. 

Mr. Butteridge also involved himself passion- 
ately in a tangle of disputes for the possession 
of a great number of valuable money prizes. 
Some of these had been offered so long ago as 
1906 for successful mechanical flight. By the 
time of Mr. Butteridge's success a really very 
considerable number of newspapers, tempted 
by the impunity of the pioneers in this direction, 
had pledged themselves to pay in some cases 
quite overwhelming sums to the first person to 
fly from Manchester to Glasgow, from London 
to Manchester, one hundred miles, two hundred 
miles in England, and the like. Most had hedged 
a little with ambiguous conditions, and now 


30 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


offered resistance; one or two paid at once, and 
vehemently called attention to the fact ; and 
Mr. Butteridge plunged into litigation with the 
more recalcitrant, while at the same time sus- 
taining a vigorous agitation and canvass to in- 
duce the Government to purchase his invention. 

One fact, however, remained permanent 
throughout all the developments of this affair 
behind Butteridge’s preposterous love interest, his 
politics and personality, and all his shouting and 
boasting, and that was that, so far as the mass of 
people knew, he was in sole possession of the secret 
of the practicable aeroplane in which, for all 
one could tell to the contrary, the key of the 
future empire of the world resided. And pres- 
ently, to the great consternation of innumerable 
people, including among others Mr. Bert Small- 
ways, it became apparent that whatever negotia- 
tions were in progress for the acquisition of this 
precious secret by the British Government were 
in danger of falling through. The London Daily 
Requiem first voiced the universal alarm, and 
published an interview under the terrific caption 
of, “Mr. Butteridge Speaks his Mind.” 

Therein the inventor — if he was an inventor 
— poured out his heart. 

“I came from the end of the' earth,” he said, 
which rather seemed to confirm the Cape Town 
story, “bringing me Motherland the secret that 
would give her the empire of the world. And 
what do I get?” He paused. “I am sniffed 
at by elderly mandarins ! . . . And the woman 
I love is treated like a leper ! 


PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY 31 


“I am an Imperial Englishman,” he went on 
in a splendid outburst, subsequently written 
into the interview by his own hand; “but there 
are limits to the human heart ! There are younger 
nations — living nations ! Nations that do not 
snore and gurgle helplessly in paroxysms of pleth- 
ora upon beds of formality and red tape ! There 
are nations that will not fling away the empire of 
earth in order to slight an unknown man and 
insult a noble woman whose boots they are not 
fitted to unlatch. There are nations not blinded 
to Science, not given over hand and foot to effete 
snobocracies and Degenerate Decadents. In short, 
mark my words — there are other nations /” . . . 

This speech it was that particularly impressed 
Bert Smallways. “If them Germans or them 
Americans get hold of this,” he said impressively 
to his brother, “the British Empire’s done. It’s 
U-P. The Union Jack, so to speak, won’t be 
worth the paper it’s written on, Tom.” 

“I suppose you couldn’t lend us a hand this 
morning,” said Jessica, in his impressive pause. 
“Everybody in Bun Hill seems wanting early 
potatoes at once. Tom can’t carry half of 
them.” 

“We’re living on a volcano,” said Bert, disre- 
garding the suggestion. “At any moment war 
may come — such a war !” 

He shook his head portentously. 

“You’d better take this lot first, Tom,” said 
Jessica. She turned briskly on Bert. “Can you 
spare us a morning?” she asked. 

“I dessay I can,” said Bert. “The shop’s very 


32 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


quiet s’morning. Though all this danger to the 
Empire worries me something frightful.” 

“Work’ll take it off your mind/’ said Jessica. 

And presently he too was going out into a world 
of change and wonder, bowed beneath a load of 
potatoes and patriotic insecurity, that merged at 
last into a very definite irritation at the weight 
and want of style of the potatoes and a very 
clear conception of the entire detestableness of 
Jessica. 


CHAPTER II 


HOW BERT SMALLWAYS GOT INTO DIFFICULTIES 

§1 

It did not occur to either Tom or Bert Smallways 
that this remarkable aerial performance of Mr. 
Butteridge was likely to affect either of their lives 
in any special manner, that it would in any way 
single them out from the millions about them; 
and when they had witnessed it from the crest 
of Bun Hill, and seen the fly-like mechanism, its 
rotating planes a golden haze in the sunset, sink 
humming to the harbour of its shed again, they 
turned back towards the sunken greengrocery 
beneath the great iron standard of the London to 
Brighton mono-rail, and their minds reverted to 
the discussion that had engaged them before Mr. 
Butteridge 's triumph had come in sight out of 
the London haze. 

It was a difficult and unsuccessful discussion. 
They had to carry it on in shouts because of the 
moaning and roaring of the gyroscopic motor-cars 
that traversed the High Street, and in its nature 
it was contentious and private. The Grubb busi- 
ness was in difficulties, and Grubb in a moment of 
financial eloquence had given a half-share in it 
to Bert, whose relations with his employer had 


34 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


been for some time unsalaried and pallish and 
informal. 

Bert was trying to impress Tom with the idea 
that the reconstructed Grubb & Smallways offered 
unprecedented and unparalleled opportunities to 
the judicious small investor. It was coming home 
to Bert, as though it were an entirely new fact, 
that Tom was singularly impervious to ideas. In 
the end he put the financial issues on one side, and, 
making the thing entirely a matter of fraternal 
affection, succeeded in borrowing a sovereign on 
the security of his word of honour. 

The firm of Grubb & Smallways, formerly 
Grubb, had indeed been singularly unlucky in the 
last year or so. For many years the business had 
struggled along with a flavour of romantic inse- 
curity in a small, dissolute-looking shop in the 
High Street, adorned with brilliantly coloured 
advertisements of cycles, a display of bells, trouser- 
clips, oil-cans, pump-clips, frame-cases, wallets, 
and other accessories, and the announcement of 
“Bicycles on Hire/' “Repairs/' “Free inflation," 
“Petrol," and similar attractions. They were 
agents for several obscure makes of bicycle, — two 
samples constituted the stock, — and occasionally 
they effected a sale ; they also repaired punctures 
and did their best — though luck was not always 
on their side — with any other repairing that was 
brought to them. They handled a line of cheap 
gramophones, and did a little with musical boxes. 
The staple of their business was, however, the let- 
ting of bicycles on hire. It was a singular trade, 
obeying no known commercial or economic prin- 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 35 


ciples — indeed, no principles. There was a 
stock of ladies’ and gentlemen’s bicycles in a state 
of disrepair that passes description, and these, 
the hiring stock, were let to unexacting and reck- 
less people, inexpert in the things of this world, 
at a nominal rate of one shilling for the first hour 
and sixpence per hour afterwards. But really 
there were no fixed prices, and insistent boys could 
get bicycles and the thrill of danger for an hour for 
so low a sum as threepence, provided they could 
convince Grubb that that was all they had. The 
saddle and handle-bar were then sketchily ad- 
justed by Grubb, a deposit exacted, except in the 
case of familiar boys, the machine lubricated, 
and the adventurer started upon his career. 
Usually he or she came back, but at times, when 
the accident was serious, Bert or Grubb had to go 
out and fetch the machine home. Hire was al- 
ways charged up to the hour of return to the shop 
and deducted from the deposit. It was rare 
that a bicycle started out from their hands in a 
state of pedantic efficiency. Romantic possibili- 
ties of accident lurked in the worn thread of the 
screw that adjusted the saddle, in the precarious 
pedals, in the loose-knit chain, in the handle-bars, 
above all in the brakes and tyres. Tappings and 
clankings and strange rhythmic creakings awoke 
as the intrepid hirer pedalled out into the coun- 
try. Then perhaps the bell would jam or a brake 
fail to act on a hill; or the seat-pillar would get 
loose, and the saddle drop three or four inches 
with a disconcerting bump ; or the loose and rat- 
tling chain would jump the cogs of the chain- 


36 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


wheel as the machine ran downhill, and so bring 
the mechanism to an abrupt and disastrous stop 
without at the same time arresting the forward 
momentum of the rider; or a tyre would bang, 
or sigh quietly, and give up the struggle for effi- 
ciency. 

When the hirer returned, a heated pedestrian, 
Grubb would ignore all verbal complaints, and 
examine the machine gravely. 

“This ain’t ’ad fair usage,” he used to begin. 

He became a mild embodiment of the spirit 
of reason. “You can’t expect a bicycle to take 
you up in its arms and carry you,” he used to 
say. “You got to show intelligence. After all 
— it’s machinery.” 

Sometimes the process of liquidating the con- 
sequent claims bordered on violence. It was 
always a very rhetorical and often a trying affair, 
but in these progressive times you have to make 
a noise to get a living. It was often hard work, 
but nevertheless this hiring was a fairly steady 
source of profit, until one day all the panes in 
the window and door were broken and the stock 
on sale in the window greatly damaged and dis- 
ordered by two over-critical hirers with no sense 
of rhetorical irrelevance. They were big, coarse 
stokers from Gravesend. One was annoyed be- 
cause his left pedal had come off, and the other 
because his tyre had become deflated, small and 
indeed negligible accidents by Bun Hill stand- 
ards, due entirely to the ungentle handling of 
the delicate machines entrusted to them — and 
they failed to see clearly how they put themselves 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 37 


in the wrong by this method of argument. It is 
a poor way of convincing a man that he has let 
you a defective machine to throw his foot-pump 
about his shop, and take his stock of gongs out- 
side in order to return them through the window- 
panes. It carried no real conviction to the 
minds of either Grubb or Bert; it only irritated 
and vexed them. One quarrel makes many, and 
this unpleasantness led to a violent dispute be- 
tween Grubb and the landlord upon the moral 
aspects of and legal responsibility for the con- 
sequent re-glazing. In the end Grubb and Small- 
ways were put to the expense of a strategic 
nocturnal removal to another position. 

It was a position they had long considered. It 
was a small, shed-like shop with a plate-glass 
window and one room behind, just at the sharp 
bend in the road at the bottom of Bun Hill ; and 
here they struggled along bravely, in spite of per- 
sistent annoyance from their former landlord, 
hoping for certain eventualities the peculiar 
situation of the shop seemed to promise. Here, 
too, they were doomed to disappointment. 

The High Road from London to Brighton that 
ran through Bun Hill was like the British Empire 
or the British Constitution — a thing that had 
grown to its present importance. Unlike any 
other roads in Europe the British high roads have 
never been subjected to any organised attempts 
to grade or straighten them out, and to that no 
doubt their peculiar picturesqueness is to be 
ascribed. The old Bun Hill High Street drops at 
its end for perhaps eighty or a hundred feet of 


38 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


descent at an angle of one in five, turns at right 
angles to the left, runs in a curve for about thirty 
yards to a brick bridge over the dry ditch that 
had once been the Otterbourne, and then bends 
sharply to the right again round a dense clump 
of trees and goes on, a simple, straightforward, 
peaceful high road. There had been one or two 
horse-and-van and bicycle accidents in the place 
before the shop Bert and Grubb took was built, 
and, to be frank, it was the probability of others 
that attracted them to it. 

Its possibilities had come to them first with a 
humorous flavour. 

“Here’s one of the places where a chap might 
get a living by keeping hens,” said Grubb. 

“You can’t get a living by keeping hens,” said 
Bert. 

“You’d keep the hen and have it spatch- 
cocked,” said Grubb. “The motor chaps would 
pay for it.” 

When they really came to take the place they 
remembered this conversation. Hens, however, 
were out of the question; there was no place for 
a run unless they had it in the shop. It would 
have been obviously out of place there. The shop 
was much more modern than their former one, 
and had a plate-glass front. “Sooner or later,” 
said Bert, “we shall get a motor-car through 
this.” 

b “That’s all right,” said Grubb. “Compensa- 
tion. I don’t mind when that motor-car comes 
along. I don’t mind even if it gives me a shock to 
the system.” 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 39 


“And meanwhile,” said Bert, with great artful- 
ness, “I’m going to buy myself a dog.” 

He did. He bought three in succession. He 
surprised the people at the Dogs' Home in Batter- 
sea by demanding a deaf retriever, and rejecting 
every candidate that pricked up its ears. “I 
want a good, deaf, slow-moving dog,” he said. 
“A dog that doesn't put himself out for things.” 

They displayed inconvenient curiosity; they 
declared a great scarcity of deaf dogs. 

“You see,” they said, “dogs aren't deaf.” 

“Mine's got to be,” said Bert. “I've had dogs 
that aren't deaf. All I want. It's like this, you 
see — I sell gramophones. Naturally I got to 
make 'em talk and tootle a bit to show 'em orf. 
Well, a dog that isn't deaf doesn't like it — gets 
excited, smells round, barks, growls. That upsets 
the customer. See? Then a dog that has his 
hearing fancies things. Makes burglars out of 
passing tramps. Wants to fight every motor that 
makes a whizz. All very well if you want livening 
up, but our place is lively enough. I don't want 
a dog of that sort. I want a quiet dog.” 

In the end he got three in succession, but none of 
them turned out well. The first strayed off into 
the infinite, heeding no appeals; the second was 
killed in the night by a fruit motor-waggon which 
fled before Grubb could get down; the third got 
itself entangled in the front wheel of a passing 
cyclist, who came through the plate glass, and 
proved to be an actor out of work and an undis- 
charged bankrupt. He demanded compensation 
for some fancied injury, would hear nothing of the 


40 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


valuable dog he had killed or the window he had 
broken, obliged Grubb by sheer physical obduracy 
to straighten his buckled front wheel, and pestered 
the struggling firm with a series of inhumanly 
worded solicitor’s letters. Grubb answered them 
— stingingly, and put himself, Bert thought, in 
the wrong. 

Affairs got more and more exasperating and 
strained under these pressures. The window was 
boarded up, and an unpleasant altercation about 
their delay in repairing it with the new landlord, 
a Bun Hill butcher — and a loud, bellowing, un- 
reasonable person at that — served to remind 
them of their unsettled troubles with the old. 
Things were at this pitch when Bert bethought 
himself of creating a sort of debenture capital in 
the business for the benefit of Tom. But, as I 
have said, Tom had no enterprise in his composi- 
tion. His idea of investment was the stocking; 
he bribed his brother not to keep the offer open. 

And then ill-luck made its last lunge at their 
crumbling business and brought it to the ground. 

§2 

It is a poor heart that never rejoices, and 
Whitsuntide had an air of coming as an agreeable 
break in the business complications of Grubb & 
Smallways. Encouraged by the practical out- 
come of Bert’s negotiations with his brother, 
and by the fact that half the hiring-stock was out 
from Saturday to Monday, they decided to ignore 
the residuum of hiring-trade on Sunday and devote 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 41 


that day to much-needed relaxation and refresh- 
ment — to have, in fact, an unstinted good time, 
a beano on Whit Sunday, and return invigorated 
to grapple with their difficulties and the Bank 
Holiday repairs on the Monday. No good thing 
was ever done by exhausted and dispirited men. 
It happened that they had made the acquaintance 
of two young ladies in employment in Clapham, 
Miss Flossie Bright and Miss Edna Bunthorne, 
and it was resolved therefore to make a cheerful 
little cyclist party of four into the heart of Kent, 
and to picnic and spend an indolent afternoon and 
evening among the trees and bracken between 
Ashford and Maidstone. 

Miss Bright could ride a bicycle, and a machine 
was found for her, not among the hiring stock, but 
specially, in the sample held for sale. Miss Bun- 
thorne, whom Bert particularly affected, could not 
ride, and so with some difficulty he hired a basket- 
work trailer from the big business of Wray’s in 
the Clapham Road. To see our young men, 
brightly dressed and cigarettes alight, wheeling 
off to the rendezvous, Grubb guiding the lady’s 
machine beside him with one skilful hand and 
Bert teuf-teuffing steadily, was to realise how 
pluck may triumph even over insolvency. Their 
landlord, the butcher, said, “Gurr, ” as they 
passed, and shouted, “Go it!” in a loud, savage 
tone to their receding backs. 

M uch they cared ! 

“The weather was fine, and though they were on 
their way southward before nine o’clock, there was 
already a great multitude of holiday people abroad 


42 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


upon the roads. There were quantities of young 
men and women on bicycles and motor-bicycles, 
and a majority of gyroscopic motor-cars running 
bicycle-fashion on two wheels, mingled with old- 
fashioned four-wheeled traffic. Bank Holiday 
times always bring out old stored-away vehicles 
and odd people; one saw tricars and electric 
broughams and dilapidated old racing motors 
with huge pneumatic tyres. Once our holiday- 
makers saw a horse and cart, and once a youth 
riding a black horse amidst the badinage of the 
passers-by. And there were several navigable 
gas air-ship^not to mention balloons, in the air. 
It was all immensely interesting and refreshing 
after the dark anxieties of the shop. Edna wore 
a brown straw hat with poppies, that suited her 
admirably, and sat in the trailer like a queen, and 
the eight-year-old motor-bicycle ran like a thing 
of yesterday. 

Little it seemed to matter to Mr. Bert Small- 
ways that a newspaper placard proclaimed: — 


GERMANY DENOUNCES THE MONROE 
DOCTRINE. 

AMBIGUOUS ATTITUDE OF JAPAN. 
WHAT WILL BRITAIN DO? IS IT WAR? 


This sort of thing was always going on, and on 
holidays one disregarded it as a matter of course. 
Week-days, in the slack time after the midday 
meal, then perhaps one might worry about the 
Empire and international politics; but not on a 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 43 


sunny Sunday, with a pretty girl trailing behind 
one, and envious cyclists trying to race you. Nor 
did our young people attach any great importance 
to the flitting suggestions of military activity they 
glimpsed ever and again. Near Maidstone they 
came on a string of eleven motor-guns of peculiar 
construction halted by the roadside, with a num- 
ber of businesslike engineers grouped about them 
watching through field-glasses some sort of en- 
trenchment that was going on near the crest of 
the downs. It signified nothing to Bert. 

“What's up?" said Edna. 

“Oh ! — manoeuvres," said Bert^^ 

“Oh! I thought they did them at Easter," 
said Edna, and troubled no more. 

The last great British war, the Boer war, was 
over and forgotten, and the public had lost the 
fashion of expert military criticism. 

Our four young people picnicked cheerfully, 
and were happy in the manner of a happiness that 
was an ancient mode in Nineveh. Eyes were 
bright, Grubb was funny and almost witty, and 
Bert achieved epigrams; the hedges were full of 
honeysuckle and dog-roses; in the woods the 
distant toot-toot-toot of the traffic on the dust- 
hazy high road might have been no more than the 
horns of elf-land. They laughed and gossiped and 
picked flowers and made love and talked, and the 
girls smoked cigarettes. Also they scuffled play- 
fully. Among other things they talked aeronau- 
tics, and how they would come for a picnic to- 
gether in Bert's flying-machine before ten years 
were out. The world seemed full of amusing pos- 


44 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


sibilities that afternoon. They wondered what 
their great-grandparents would have thought of 
aeronautics. In the evening, about seven, the 
party turned homeward, expecting no disaster, 
and it was only on the crest of the downs between 
Wrotham and Kingsdown that disaster came. 

They had come up the hill in the twilight ; Bert 
was anxious to get as far as possible before he lit — 
or attempted to light, for the issue was a doubtful 
one — his lamps, and they had scorched past a 
number of cyclists, and by a four-wheeled motor- 
car of the old style lamed by a deflated tyre. 
Some dust had penetrated Bert’s horn, and the 
result was a curious, amusing, wheezing sound had 
got into his “honk, honk.” For the sake of merri- 
ment and glory he was making this sound as much 
as possible, and Edna was in fits of laughter in the 
trailer. They made a sort of rushing cheerfulness 
along the road that affected their fellow-travellers 
variously, according to their temperaments. She 
did notice a good lot of bluish, evil-smelling smoke 
coming from about the bearings between his feet, 
but she thought this was one of the natural con- 
comitants of motor-traction, and troubled no 
more about it, until abruptly it burst into a little 
yellow-tipped flame. 

“Bert!” she screamed. 

But Bert had put on the brakes with such sud- 
denness that she found herself involved with his 
leg as he dismounted. She got to the side of the 
road and hastily readjusted her hat, which had 
suffered. 

“Gaw !” said Bert. 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 45 


He stood for some fatal seconds watching the 
petrol drip and catch, and the flame, which was 
now beginning to smell of enamel as well as oil, 
spread and grew. His chief idea was the sorrow- 
ful one that he had not sold the machine second- 
hand a year ago, and that he ought to have done 
so - — a good idea in its way, but not immediately 
helpful. He turned upon Edna sharply. “Get 
a lot of wet sand,” he said. Then he wheeled the 
machine a little towards the side of the roadway 
and laid it down and looked about for a supply of 
wet sand. The flames received this as a helpful 
attention, and made the most of it. They seemed 
to brighten and the twilight to deepen about them. 
The road was a flinty road in the chalk country, 
and ill-provided with sand. 

Edna accosted a short, fat cyclist. “We want 
wet sand,” she said, and added, “our motor’s on 
fire.” The short, fat cyclist stared blankly for a 
moment, then with a helpful cry began to scrabble 
in the road-grit. Whereupon Bert and Edna also 
scrabbled in the road-grit. Other cyclists ar- 
rived, dismounted and stood about, and their 
flame-lit faces expressed satisfactign, interest, 
curiosity. “Wet sand,” said the short, fat man, 
scrabbling terribly — “wet sand.” One joined 
him. They threw hard-earned handfuls of road- 
grit upon the flames, which accepted them with 
enthusiasm. 

Grubb arrived, riding hard. He was shouting 
something. He sprang off and threw his bicycle 
into the hedge. “Don’t throw water on it!” 
he said — “don’t throw water on it!” He dis- 


46 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


played commanding presence of mind. He be- 
came captain of the occasion. Others were glad 
to repeat the things he said and imitate his actions. 

“Don’t throw water on it!” they cried. Also 
there was no water. 

“Beat it out, you fools !” he said. 

He seized a rug from the trailer (it was an Aus- 
trian blanket, and Bert’s winter coverlet) and 
began to beat at the burning petrol. For a 
wonderful minute he seemed to succeed. But he 
scattered burning pools of petrol on the road, and 
others, fired by his enthusiasm, imitated his action. 
Bert caught up a trailer-cushion and began to 
beat; there was another cushion and a table- 
cloth, and these also were seized. A young hero 
pulled off his jacket and joined the beating. For 
a moment there was less talking than hard breath- 
ing, and a tremendous flapping. Flossie, arriving 
on the outskirts of the crowd, cried, “Oh, my 
God!” and burst loudly into tears. “Help!” 
she said, and “Fire !” 

The lame motor-car arrived, and stopped in con- 
sternation. A tall, goggled, grey-haired man who 
was driving inquired with an Oxford intonation 
and a clear, careful enunciation, “Can we help at 
all?” 

It became manifest that the rug, the table-cloth, 
the cushions, the jacket, were getting smeared 
with petrol and burning. The soul seemed to go 
out of the cushion Bert was swaying, and the air 
was full of feathers, like a snowstorm in the still 
twilight. 

Bert had got very dusty and sweaty and strenu- 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 47 


ous. It seemed to him his weapon had been 
wrested from him at the moment of victory. The 
fire lay like a dying thing, close to the ground and 
wicked ; it gave a leap of anguish at every whack 
of the beaters. But now Grubb had gone off to 
stamp out the burning blanket; the others were 
slacking just at the moment of victory. One had 
dropped the cushion and was running to the 
motor-car. “’Ere!” cried Bert; “keep on!” 

He flung the deflated burning rags of cushion 
aside, whipped off his jacket and sprang at the 
flames with a shout. He stamped into the ruin 
until flames ran up his boots. Edna saw him, a 
red-lit hero, and thought it was good to be a man. 

A bystander was hit by a hot halfpenny flying 
out of the air. Then Bert thought of the papers 
in his pockets, and staggered back, trying to ex- 
tinguish his burning jacket — checked, repulsed, 
dismayed. 

Edna was struck by the benevolent appearance 
of an elderly spectator in a silk hat and Sabbatical 
garments. “Oh!” she cried to him. “Help this 
young man ! How can you stand and see it?” 

A cry of “The tarpaulin !” arose. 

An earnest-looking man in a very light grey 
cycling-suit had suddenly appeared at the side of 
the lame motor-car and addressed the owner. 
“Have you a tarpaulin?” he said. 

“Yes,” said the gentlemanly man. “Yes. 
We’ve got a tarpaulin.” 

“That’s it,” said the earnest-looking man, 
suddenly shouting. “Let’s have it, quick!” 

The gentlemanly man, with feeble and dep- 


48 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


recatory gestures, and in the manner of a hyp- 
notised person, produced an excellent large 
tarpaulin. 

“Here!” cried the earnest-looking man to 
Grubb. “Ketch holt!” 

Then everybody realised that a new method 
was to be tried. A number of willing hands seized 
upon the Oxford gentleman’s tarpaulin. The 
others stood away with approving noises. The tar- 
paulin was held over the burning bicycle like a 
canopy, and then smothered down upon it. 

“We ought to have done this before,” panted 
Grubb. 

There was a moment of triumph. The flames 
vanished. Every one who could contrive to do so 
touched the edge of the tarpaulin. Bert held 
down a corner with two hands and a foot. The 
tarpaulin, bulged up in the centre, seemed to be 
suppressing triumphant exultation. Then its self- 
approval became too much for it ; it burst into a 
bright red smile in the centre. It was exactly 
like the opening of a mouth. It laughed with a 
gust of flames. They were reflected redly in the 
observant goggles of the gentleman who owned the 
tarpaulin. Everybody recoiled. 

“Save the trailer!” cried some one, and that 
was the last round in the battle. But the trailer 
could not be detached ; its wicker-work had 
caught, and it was the last thing to burn. A sort 
of hush fell upon the gathering. The petrol burnt 
low, the wicker-work trailer banged and crackled. 
The crowd divided itself into an outer circle of 
critics, advisers, and secondary characters, who 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 49 


had played undistinguished parts or no parts at all 
in the affair, and a central group of heated and dis- 
tressed principals. A young man with an inquir- 
ing mind and a considerable knowledge of motor- 
bicycles fixed on to Grubb and wanted to argue 
that the thing could not have happened. Grubb 
was short and inattentive with him, and the young 
man withdrew to the back of the crowd, and there 
told the benevolent old gentleman in the silk hat 
that people who went out with machines they 
didn’t understand had only themselves to blame 
if things went wrong. 

The old gentleman let him talk for some time, 
and then remarked, in a tone of rapturous en- 
joyment: “ Stone deaf,” and added, “ Nasty 
things.” 

A rosy-faced man in a straw hat claimed atten- 
tion. “I did save the front wheel,” he said; 
“ you’d have had that tyre catch, too, if I hadn’t 
kept turning it round.” It became manifest that 
this was so. The front wheel had retained its 
tyre, was intact, was still rotating slowly among 
the blackened and twisted ruins of the rest of the 
machine. It had something of that air of con- 
scious virtue, of unimpeachable respectability, 
that distinguishes a rent collector in a low neigh- 
bourhood. “That wheel’s worth a pound,” said 
the rosy-faced man, making a song of it. “I kep’ 
turning it round.” 

Newcomers kept arriving from the south with 
the question, “What’s up?” until it got on 
Grubb’s nerves. Londonward the crowd was con- 
stantly losing people; they would mount their 

E 


50 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


various wheels with the satisfied manner of spec- 
tators who have had the best. Their voices would 
recede into the twilight; one would hear a laugh 
at the memory of this particularly salient incident 
or that. 

“I’m afraid,” said the gentleman of the motor- 
car, "my tarpaulin’s a bit done for.” 

Grubb admitted that the owner was the best 
judge of that. 

“ Nothing else I can do for you?” said the 
gentleman of the motor-car, it may be with a 
suspicion of irony. 

Bert was roused to action. “Look here,” 
he said. “There’s my young lady. If she ain’t 
’ome by ten they lock her out. See? Well, 
all my money was in my jacket pocket, and it’s 
all mixed up with the burnt stuff, and that’s 
too ’ot to touch. Is Clapham out of your 
way?” 

“All in the day’s work,” said the gentleman with 
the motor-car, and turned to Edna. “Very 
pleased indeed,” he said, “if you’ll come with us. 
We’re late for dinner as it is, so it won’t make 
much difference for us to go home by way of 
Clapham. We’ve got to get to Surbiton, any- 
how. I’m afraid you’ll find us a little slow.” 

“But what’s Bert going to do?” said Edna. 

“I don’t know that we can accommodate 
Bert,” said the motor-car gentleman, “though 
we’re tremendously anxious to oblige.” 

“You couldn’t take the whole lot?” said Bert, 
waving his hand at the deboshed and blackened 
ruins on the ground. 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 51 


“I’m awfully afraid I can't,” said the Oxford 
man. “Awfully sorry, you know.” 

“Then I'll have to stick 'ere for a bit,” said 
Bert. “I got to see the thing through. You 
go on, Edna.” 

“Don't like leavin' you, Bert.” 

“You can't 'elp it, Edna.” . . . 

The last Edna saw of Bert was his figure, in 
charred and blackened shirtsleeves, standing in 
the dusk. He was musing deeply by the mixed 
ironwork and ashes of his vanished motor-bicycle, 
a melancholy figure. His retinue of spectators 
had shrunk now to half a dozen figures. Flossie 
and Grubb were preparing to follow her desertion. 

“Cheer up, old Bert!” cried Edna, with arti- 
ficial cheerfulness. “So long.” 

“So long, Edna,” said Bert. 

“See you to-morrer.” 

“See you to-morrer,” said Bert, though he was 
destined, as a matter of fact, to see much of the 
habitable globe before he saw her again. 

Bert began to light matches from a borrowed 
boxful, and search for a half-crown that still 
eluded him among the charred remains. His 
face was grave and melancholy. 

“I wish that 'adn't 'appened,” said Flossie, 
riding on with Grubb. . . . 

And at last Bert was left almost alone, a sad, 
blackened Promethean figure, cursed by the gift 
of fire. He had entertained vague ideas of hiring 
a cart, of achieving miraculous repairs, of still 
snatching some residual value from his one chief 
possession. Now, in the darkening night, he 


52 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


perceived the vanity of such intentions. Truth 
came to him bleakly, and laid her chill conviction 
upon him. He took hold of the handle-bar, 
stood the thing up, tried to push it forward. 
The tyreless hind- wheel was jammed hopelessly, 
even as he feared. For a minute or so he stood 
upholding his machine, a motionless despair. 
Then with a great effort he thrust the ruins from 
him into the ditch, kicked at it once, regarded 
it for a moment, and turned his face resolutely 
Londonward. 

He did not once look back. 

“That’s the end of that game!” said Bert. 
“No more teuf-teuf-teuf for Bert Smallways for 
a year or two. Good-bye ’Olidays ! . . . Oh ! 
I ought to ’ave sold the blasted thing when I had 
a chance three years ago.” 



The next morning found the firm of Grubb & 
Smallways in a state of profound despondency. 
It seemed a small matter to them that the news- 
paper and cigarette shop opposite displayed such 
placards as this : — 


REPORTED AMERICAN ULTIMATUM. 
BRITAIN MUST FIGHT. 

OUR INFATUATED WAR OFFICE STILL 
REFUSES TO LISTEN TO MR. BUTTERIDGE. 

GREAT MONO-RAIL DISASTER AT TIMBUCTOO. 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 53 


or this : — 


WAR A QUESTION OF HOURS. 
NEW YORK CALM. 
EXCITEMENT IN BERLIN. 


or again : - — 

WASHINGTON STILL SILENT. 

WHAT WILL PARIS DO ? 

THE PANIC ON THE BOURSE. 

THE KING’S GARDEN PARTY TO THE 
MASKED TWAREGS. 

MR. BUTTERIDGE MAKES AN OFFER. 
LATEST BETTING FROM TEHERAN. 


or this : — 


WILL AMERICA FIGHT ? 
ANTI-GERMAN RIOT IN BAGDAD. 

THE MUNICIPAL SCANDALS AT DAMASCUS. 
MR. B UTTERIDGE’S INVENTION FOR AMERICA. 


Bert stared at these over the card of pump- 
clips in the pane in the door with unseeing eyes. 
He wore a blackened flannel shirt, and the jacket- 
less ruins of the holiday suit of yesterday. The 
boarded-up shop was dark and depressing be- 
yond words, the few scandalous hiring machines 




54 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


had never looked so hopelessly disreputable. He 
thought of their fellows who were “out,” and of 
the approaching disputations of the afternoon. 
He thought of their new landlord, and of their 
old landlord, and of bills and claims. Life pre- 
sented itself for the first time as a hopeless fight 
against fate. . . . 

“Grubb, o’ man,” he said, distilling the quint- 
essence, “I’m fair sick of this shop.” 

“So’m I,” said Grubb. 

“I’m out of conceit with it. I don’t seem to 
care ever to speak to a customer again.” 

“There’s that trailer,” said Grubb, after a 
pause. 

“Blow the trailer !” said Bert. “Anyhow, 
I didn’t leave a deposit on it. I didn’t do that. 
Still ” 

He turned round on his friend. “Look ’ere,” 
he said, “we aren’t gettin’ on here. We been 
losing money hand over fist. We got things 
tied up in fifty knots.” 

“What can we do?” said Grubb. 

“Clear out. Sell what we can for what it will 
fetch, and quit. See ? It’s no good ’anging on to 
a losing concern. No sort of good. Jest foolish- 
ness.” 

. “That’s all right,” said Grubb — “that’s all 
right ; but it ain’t your capital been sunk in 
it.” 

“No need for us to sink after our capital,” said 
Bert, ignoring the point. 

“I’m not going to be held responsible for that 
trailer, anyhow. That ain’t my affair.” 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 55 


“ Nobody arst you to make it your affair. If 
you like to stick on here, well and good. I'm 
quitting. I'll see Bank Holiday through, and 
then I'm O-R-P-H. See?" 

“Leavin' me?” 

“Leavin' you. If you must be left." 

Grubb looked round the shop. It certainly 
had become distasteful. Once upon a time it 
had been bright with hope and new beginnings 
and stock and the prospect of credit. Now — 
now it was failure and dust. Very likely the 
landlord would be round presently to go on with 
the row about the window. . . . “Where d'you 
think of going, Bert?" Grubb asked. 

Bert turned round and regarded him. “I 
thought it out as I was walking 'ome, and in bed. 
I couldn’t sleep a wink." 

“What did you think out?" 

“pirm« ” 

“What plans?" 

“Oh! You're for sticking here." 

“Not if anything better was to offer." 

“It's only an ideer," said Bert. 

“Let's 'ear it." 

“You made the girls laugh yestiday, that song 
you sang." 

“Seems a long time ago now," said Grubb. 

“And old Edna nearly cried — over that bit of 
mine." 

“She got a fly in her eye," said Grubb ; “I saw 
it. But what's this got to do with your plan?" 

“No end," said Bert. 

“'Ow?" 


56 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


“ Don’t you see?” 

“Not singing in the streets?” 

“Streets! No fear! But ’ow about the Tour 
of the Waterin' Places of England, Grubb ? Sing- 
ing ! Young men of family doing it for a lark? 
You ain't got a bad voice, you know, and mine's 
all right. I never see a chap singing on the beach 
yet that I couldn't 'ave sung into a cocked hat. 
And we both know how to put on the toff a bit. 
Eh? Well, that's my ideer. Me and you, Grubb, 
with a refined song and a breakdown. Like we 
was doing for foolery yestiday. That was what 
put it into my 'ead. Easy make up a programme 
— easy. Six choice items, and one or two for 
encores and patter. I'm all right for the patter — 
anyhow.” 

Grubb remained regarding his darkened and 
disheartening shop; he thought of his former 
landlord and his present landlord, and of the 
general disgustingness of business in an age which 
re-echoes to The Bitter Cry of the Middle Class; 
and then it seemed to him that afar off he heard the 
twankle, twankle of a banjo, and the voice of a 
stranded siren singing. He had a sense of hot 
sunshine upon sand, of the children of at least 
transiently opulent holiday makers in a circle 
round about him, of the whisper, “They are 
really gentlemen,” and then dollop, dollop came 
the coppers in the hat. Sometimes even silver. 
It was all income; no outgoings, no bills. “I'm 
on, Bert,” he said. 

“Right 0!” said Bert, and, “Now we shan't 
be long.” 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 57 


“We needn’t start without capital neither/’ 
said Grubb. “If we take the best of these ma- 
chines up to the Bicycle Mart in Finsbury we’d 
raise six or seven pounds on ’em. We could easy 
do that to-morrow before anybody much was 
about. ...” 

“Nice to think of old Suet-and-Bones coming 
round to make his usual row with us, and finding 
a card up 1 Closed for Repairs.’ ” 

“We’ll do that/’ said Grubb with zest — 
“we’ll do that. And we’ll put up another notice, 
and jest arst all inquirers to go round to ’im and 
inquire. See? Then they’ll know all about us.” 

Before the day was out the whole enterprise 
was planned. They decided at first that they 
would call themselves the Naval Mr. O’s, a pla- 
giarism, and not perhaps a very good one, from 
the title of the well-known troupe of “Scarlet Mr. 
E’s,” and Bert rather clung to the idea of a uni- 
form of bright blue serge, with a lot of gold lace 
and cord and ornamentation, rather like a naval 
officer’s, but more so. But that had to be aban- 
doned as impracticable, it would have taken too 
much time and money to prepare. They per- 
ceived they must wear some cheaper and more 
readily prepared costume, and Grubb fell back on 
white dominoes. They entertained the notion 
for a time of selecting the two worst machines 
from the hiring-stock, painting them over with 
crimson enamel paint, replacing the bells by the 
loudest sort of motor-horn, and doing a ride 
about to begin and end the entertainment. They 
doubted the advisability of this step. 


58 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


“There’s people in the world/’ said Bert, 
“who wouldn’t recognise us, who’d know them 
bicycles again like a shot, and we don’t want to 
go on with no old stories. We want a fresh 
start.” 

“I do,” said Grubb, “badly.” 

“We want to forget things — and cut all these 
rotten old worries. They ain’t doin’ us good. 

Nevertheless, they decided to take the risk of 
these bicycles, and they decided their costumes 
should be brown stockings and sandals, and 
cheap unbleached sheets with a hole cut in the 
middle, and wigs and beards of tow. The rest 
their normal selves! “The Desert Dervishes,” 
they would call themselves, and their chief songs 
would be those popular ditties, “In my Trailer,” 
and “What Price Hair-pins Now?” 

They decided to begin with small seaside 
places, and gradually, as they gained confidence, 
attack larger centres. To begin with they selected 
Littlestone in Kent, chiefly because of its un- 
assuming name. 

So they planned, and it seemed a small and 
unimportant thing to them that as they chattered 
the governments of half the world and more were 
drifting into war. About midday they became 
aware of the first of the evening-paper placards 
shouting to them across the street : — 


THE WAR-CLOUD DARKENS. 


Nothing else but that. 

“Always rottin’ about war now,” said Bert. 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 59 


“They’ll get it in the neck in real earnest one of 
these days, if they ain’t precious careful.” 

§ 4 

So you will understand the sudden apparition 
that surprised rather than delighted the quiet 
informality of Dymchurch sands. Dymchurch 
was one of the last places on the coast of Eng- 
land to be reached by the mono-rail, and so its 
spacious sands were still, at the time of this 
story, the secret and delight of quite a limited 
number of people. They went there to flee vul- 
garity and extravagances, and to bathe and sit 
and talk and play with their children in peace, 
and the Desert Dervishes did not please them at 
all. 

The two white figures on scarlet wheels came 
upon them out of the infinite along the sands 
from Littlestone, grew nearer and larger and 
more audible, honk-honking and emitting weird 
cries, and generally threatening liveliness of the 
most aggressive type. “Good heavens!” said 
Dymchurch, “what’s this?” 

Then our young men, according to a precon- 
certed plan, wheeled round from file to line, dis- 
mounted and stood at attention. “Ladies and 
gentlemen,” they said, “we beg to present our- 
selves — the Desert Dervishes.” They bowed 
profoundly. 

The few scattered groups upon the beach re- 
garded them with horror for the most part, but 
some of the children and young people were 
interested and drew nearer. “There ain’t a bob 


60 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


on the beach,” said Grubb in an undertone, and 
the Desert Dervishes plied their bicycles with 
comic “ business,” that got a laugh from one very 
unsophisticated little boy. Then they took a deep 
breath and struck into the cheerful strain of 
“What Price Hair-pins Now?” Grubb sang 
the song, Bert did his best to make the chorus a 
rousing one, and at the end of each verse they 
danced certain steps, skirts in hand, that they 
had carefully rehearsed. 

“Ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-tang . . . 

What Price Hair-pins Now? ” 

So they chanted and danced their steps in the 
sunshine on Dymchurch beach, and the children 
drew near these foolish young men, marvelling 
that they should behave in this way, and the 
older people looked cold and unfriendly. 

All round the coasts of Europe that morning 
banjos were ringing, voices were bawling and 
singing, children were playing in the sun, pleas- 
ure-boats went to and fro ; the common abundant 
life of the time, unsuspicious of all dangers that 
gathered darkly against it, flowed on its cheerful 
aimless way. In the cities men fussed about 
their businesses and engagements. The news- 
paper placards that had cried “wolf!” so often, 
cried “wolf!” now in vain. 

§ 5 

Now as Bert and Grubb bawled their chorus 
for the third time, they became aware of a very 
big, golden-brown balloon low in the sky to the 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 61 


north-west, and coming rapidly towards them. 
“Jest as we're gettin' hold of ’em/' muttered 
Grubb, “up comes a counter-attraction. Go it 4 
Bert!" 

“ Ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-tang . . . 

What Price Hair-pins Now?” 

The balloon rose and fell, went out of sight — ■ 
“landed, thank goodness," said Grubb — re- 
appeared with a leap. “’Eng!” said Grubb. 
“Step it, Bert, or they'll see it!" 

They finished their dance, and then stood 
frankly staring. 

“There's something wrong with that balloon," 
said Bert. 

Everybody now was looking at the balloon, 
drawing rapidly nearer before a brisk north- 
westerly breeze. The song and dance were a 
“dead frost." Nobody thought any more about 
it. Even Bert and Grubb forgot it, and ignored 
the next item on the programme altogether. 
The balloon was bumping as though its occupants 
were trying to land; it would approach, sinking 
slowly, touch the ground, and instantly jump 
fifty feet or so in the air and immediately begin 
to fall again. Its car touched a clump of trees, 
and the black figure that had been struggling in 
the ropes fell back, or jumped back, into the 
car. In another moment it was quite close. It 
seemed a huge affair, as big as a house, and it 
floated down swiftly towards the sands; a long 
rope trailed behind it, and enormous shouts came 
from the man in the car. He seemed to be taking 


62 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


off his clothes, then his head came over the side of 
the car. “Catch hold of the rope !” they heard, 
quite plain. 

“ Salvage, Bert!” cried Grubb, and started to 
head off the rope. 

Bert followed him, and collided, without up- 
setting, with a fisherman bent upon a similar 
errand. A woman carrying a baby in her arms, 
two small boys with toy spades, and a stout gentle- 
man in flannels all got to the trailing rope at about 
the same time, and began to dance over it in their 
attempts to secure it. Bert came up to this 
wriggling, elusive serpent and got his foot on it, 
went down on all fours and achieved a grip. In 
half a dozen seconds the whole diffused popula- 
tion of the beach had, as it were, crystallised on 
the rope, and was pulling against the balloon 
under the vehement and stimulating directions 
of the man in the car. “ Pull, I tell you !” said the 
man in the car — “pull!” 

For a second or so the balloon obeyed its 
momentum and the wind and tugged its human 
anchor seaward. It dropped, touched the water, 
and made a fiat, silvery splash, and recoiled as 
one’s finger recoils when one touches anything 
hot. “Pull her in,” said the man in the car. 
u She’s fainted!” 

He occupied himself with some unseen object 
while the people on the rope pulled him in. Bert 
was nearest the balloon, and much excited and 
interested. He kept stumbling over the tail of 
the Dervish costume in his zeal. He had never 
imagined before what a big, light, wallowing 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 63 


thing a balloon was. The car was of brown coarse 
wicker-work, and comparatively small. The rope 
he tugged at was fastened to a stout-looking ring, 
four or five feet above the car. At each tug he 
drew in a yard or so of rope, and the waggling 
wicker-work was drawn so much nearer. Out of 
the car came wrathful bello wings: “Fainted, she 
has!” and then: “It’s her heart — broken with 
all she’s had to go through.” 

The balloon ceased to struggle, and sank down- 
ward. Bert dropped the rope, and ran forward 
to catch it in a new place. In another moment 
he had his hand on the car. “Lay hold of it,” 
said the man in the car, and his face appeared 
close to Bert’s — a strangely familiar face, fierce 
eyebrows, a flattish nose, a huge black moustache. 
He had discarded coat and waistcoat — perhaps 
with some idea of presently having to swim for his 
life — and his black hair was extraordinarily 
disordered. “Will all you people get hold round 
the car?” he said. “There’s a lady here fainted — 
or got failure of the heart. Heaven alone knows 
which ! My name is Butteridge. Butteridge, 
my name is — in a balloon. Now please, all on 
to the edge. This is the last time I trust myself 
to one of these paleolithic contrivances. The 
ripping-cord failed, and the valve wouldn’t act. 
If ever I meet the scoundrel who ought to have 
seen ” 

He stuck his head out between the ropes 
abruptly, and said, in a note of earnest expostula- 
tion : “Get some brandy ! — some neat brandy !” 
Some one went up the beach for it. 


64 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


In the car, sprawling upon a sort of bed-bench, 
in an attitude of elaborate self-abandonment, 
was a large, blond lady, wearing a fur coat and a 
big floriferous hat. Her head lolled back against 
the padded corner of the car, and her eyes were 
shut and her mouth open. “Me dear!” said Mr. 
Butteridge, in a common, loud voice, “we’re 
safe !” 

She gave no sign. 

“Me dear!” said Mr. Butteridge, in a greatly 
intensified loud voice, “we’re safe!” 

She was still quite impassive. 

Then Mr. Butteridge showed the fiery core of 
his soul. “If she is dead,” he said, slowly lifting 
a fist towards the balloon above him, and speaking 
in an immense tremulous bellow — “if she is 
dead, I will r-r-rend the heavens like a garment ! 
I must get her out,” he cried, his nostrils dilated 
with emotion — “I must get her out. I can- 
not have her die in a wicker-work basket nine 
feet square — she who was made for kings’ 
palaces ! Keep holt of this car ! Is there a 
strong man among ye to take her if I hand her 
out?” 

He swept the lady together by a powerful 
movement of his arms, and lifted her. “Keep 
the car from jumping,” he said to those who clus- 
tered about him. “Keep your weight on it. She 
is no light woman, and when she is out of it — 
it will be relieved.” 

Bert leapt lightly into a sitting position on the 
edge of the car. The others took a firmer grip 
upon the ropes and ring. 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 65 


“Are you ready ?” said Mr. Butteridge. 

He stood upon the bed-bench and lifted the 
lady carefully. Then he sat down on the wicker 
edge opposite to Bert, and put one leg over to 
dangle outside. A rope or so seemed to incom- 
mode him. “Will some one assist me?” he said. 
“If they would take this lady?” 

It was just at this moment, with Mr. Butteridge 
and the lady balanced finely on the basket brim, 
that she came-to. She came-to suddenly and vio- 
lently with a loud, heart-rending cry of “Alfred ! 
Save me!” And she waved her arms search- 
ingly, and then clasped Mr. Butteridge about. 

It seemed to Bert that the car swayed for a 
moment and then buck-jumped and kicked him. 
Also he saw the boots of the lady and the right 
leg of the gentleman describing arcs through the 
air, preparatory to vanishing over the side of the 
car. His impressions were complex, but they 
also comprehended the fact that he had lost his 
balance, and was going to stand on his head inside 
this creaking basket. He spread out clutching 
arms. He did stand on his head, more or less, 
his tow-beard came off and got in his mouth, and 
his cheek slid along against padding. His nose 
buried itself in a bag of sand. The car gave a 
violent lurch, and became still. 

“Confound it !” he said. 

He had an impression he must be stunned 
because of a surging in his ears, and because all 
the voices of the people about him had become 
small and remote. They were shouting like elves 
inside a hill. 


66 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


He found it a little difficult to get on his feet. 
His limbs were mixed up with the garments Mr. 
Butteridge had discarded when that gentleman 
had thought he must needs plunge into the sea. 
Bert bawled out half angry, half rueful, “You 
might have said you were going to tip the basket.” 
Then he stood up and clutched the ropes of the 
car convulsively. 

Below him, far below him, shining blue, were 
the waters of the English Channel. Far off, a 
little thing in the sunshine, and rushing down as 
if some one was bending it hollow, was the beach 
and the irregular cluster of houses that consti- 
tutes Dymchurch. He could see the little crowd 
of people he had so abruptly left. Grubb, in 
the white wrapper of a Desert Dervish, was run- 
ning along the edge of the sea. Mr. Butteridge 
was knee-deep in the water, bawling immensely. 
The lady was sitting up with her floriferous hat 
in her lap, shockingly neglected. The beach, 
east and west, was dotted with little people — 
they seemed all heads and feet — looking up. 
And the balloon, released from the twenty-five 
stone or so of Mr. Butteridge and his lady, was 
rushing up into the sky at the pace of a racing 
motor-car. “My crikey!” said Bert; “here's 
a go!” 

He looked down with a pinched face at the 
receding beach, and reflected that he wasn't 
giddy; then he made a superficial survey of the 
cords and ropes about him with a vague idea of 
“doing something.” “I’m not going to mess 
about with the thing,” he said at last, and sat 


BERT SMALLWAYS IN DIFFICULTIES 67 


down upon the mattress. “I’m not going to 
touch it. . . . I wonder what one ought to 
do?” 

Soon he got up again and stared for a long time 
at the sinking world below, at white cliffs to the 
east and flattening marsh to the left, at a minute 
wide prospect of weald and downland, at dim 
towns and harbours and rivers and ribbon-like 
roads, at ships and ships, decks and foreshortened 
funnels upon the ever-widening sea, and at the 
great mono-rail bridge that straddled the Channel 
from Folkestone to Boulogne, until at last, first 
little wisps and then a veil of filmy cloud hid the 
prospect from his eyes. He wasn’t at all giddy 
nor very much frightened, only in a state of 
enormous consternation. 


CHAPTER III 


THE BALLOON 

§1 

Bert Smallways was a vulgar little creature, 
the sort of pert, limited soul that the old civilisa- 
tion of the early twentieth century produced by the 
million in every country of the world. He had 
lived all his life in narrow streets, and between 
mean houses he could not look over, and in a nar- 
row circle of ideas from which there was no escape. 
He thought the whole duty of man was to be 
smarter than his fellows, get his hands, as he put 
it, “on the dibs,” and have a good time. He 
was, in fact, the sort of man who had made Eng- 
land and America what they were. The luck 
had been against him so far, but that was by 
the way. He was a mere aggressive and ac- 
quisitive individual with no sense of the State, 
no habitual loyalty, no devotion, no code of 
honour, no code even of courage. Now by a 
curious accident he found himself lifted out of 
his marvellous modern world for a time, out of all 
the rush and confused appeals of it, and floating 
like a thing dead and disembodied between sea 
and sky. It was as if Heaven was experimenting 
with him, had picked him out as a sample from 
68 


THE BALLOON 


69 


the English millions, to look at him more nearly, 
and to see what was happening to the soul of 
man. But what Heaven made of him in that 
case I cannot profess to imagine, for I have long 
since abandoned all theories about the ideals and 
satisfactions of Heaven. 

To be alone in a balloon at a height of fourteen 
or fifteen thousand feet — and to that height 
Bert Smallways presently rose — is like nothing 
else in human experience. It is one of the 
supreme things possible to man. No flying ma- 
chine can ever better it. It is to pass extraor- 
dinarily out of human things. It is to be still 
and alone to an unprecedented degree. It is 
solitude without the suggestion of intervention; 
it is calm without a single irrelevant murmur. 
It is to see the sky. No sound reaches one of all 
the roar and jar of humanity, the air is clear and 
sweet beyond the thought of defilement. No 
bird, no insect comes so high. No wind blows 
ever in a balloon, no breeze rustles, for it moves 
with the wind and is itself a part of the atmos- 
phere. Once started, it does not rock nor sway; 
you cannot feel whether it rises or falls. Bert 
felt acutely cold, but he wasn’t mountain-sick; 
he put on the coat and overcoat and gloves But- 
teridge had discarded — put them over the 
“Desert Dervish” sheet that covered his cheap 
best suit — and sat very still for a long time, 
overawe d by the new-found quiet of the world. 
Above him was the light, translucent, billowing 
globe of shining brown oiled silk and the blazing 
sunlight and the great deep blue dome of the sky. 


70 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


Below, far below, was a torn floor of sunlit cloud, 
slashed by enormous rents through which he 
saw the sea. 

If you had been watching him from below, 
you would have seen his head, a motionless little 
black knob, sticking out from the car first of all 
for a long time on one side, and then vanishing 
to reappear after a time at some other point. 

He wasn’t in the least degree uncomfortable 
nor afraid. He did think that as this uncontrol- 
lable thing had thus rushed up the sky with him 
it might presently rush down again, but this 
consideration did not trouble him very much. 
Essentially his state was wonder. There is 
no fear nor trouble in balloons — until they de- 
scend. 

“Gollys!” he said at last, feeling a need for 
talking; “it’s better than a motor-bike. 

“It’s all right ! 

“I suppose they’re telegraphing about, about 
me.” . . . 

The second hour found him examining the 
equipment of the car with great particularity. 
Above him was the throat of the balloon bunched 
and tied together, but with an open lumen through 
which Bert could peer up into a vast, empty, 
quiet interior, and out of which descended two 
fine cords of unknown import, one white, one 
crimson, to pockets below the ring. The netting 
about the balloon ended in cords attached to the 
ring, a big steel-bound hoop to which the car 
was slung by ropes. From it depended the trail 
rope and grapnel, and over the sides of the car 


THE BALLOON 


71 


were a number of canvas bags that Bert decided 
must be ballast to “ chuck down” if the balloon 
fell. (“Not much falling just yet,” said Bert.) 

There were an aneroid and another box-shaped 
instrument hanging from the ring. The latter 
had an ivory plate bearing “statoscope” and other 
words in French, and a little indicator quivered 
and waggled between Montee and Descente. 
“That’s all right,” said Bert. “That tells if 
you’re going up or down.” On the crimson 
padded seat of the balloon there lay a couple of 
rugs and a Kodak, and in opposite corners of the 
bottom of the car were an empty champagne 
bottle and a glass. “Refreshments,” said Bert 
meditatively, tilting the empty bottle. Then he 
had a brilliant idea. The two padded bed-like 
seats, each with blankets and mattress, he per- 
ceived, were boxes, and within he found Mr. 
Butteridge’s conception of an adequate equip- 
ment for a balloon ascent: a hamper which 
included a game pie, a Roman pie, a cold fowl, 
tomatoes, lettuce, ham sandwiches, shrimp sand- 
wiches, a large cake, knives and forks and paper 
plates, self-heating tins of coffee and cocoa, bread, 
butter, and marmalade, several carefully packed 
bottles of champagne, bottles of Perrier water, 
and a big jar of water for washing, a portfolio, 
maps, and a compass, a rucksack containing a 
number of conveniences, including curling-tongs 
and hair-pins, a cap with ear-flaps, and so forth. 

“A ’ome from ’ome,” said Bert, surveying this 
provision as he tied the ear-flaps under his chin. 

He looked over the side of the car. Far below 


72 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


were the shining clouds. They had thickened 
so that the whole world was hidden. Southward 
they were piled in great snowy masses, so that he 
was half disposed to think them mountains; 
northward and eastward they were in wavelike 
levels, and blindingly sunlit. 

“Wonder how long a balloon keeps up?” he 
said. 

He imagined he was not moving, so insensibly 
did the monster drift with the air about it. “No 
good coming down till we shift a bit,” he said. 

He consulted the statoscope. 

“Still Monty,” he said. 

“Wonder what would happen if you pulled a 
cord?” 

“No,” he decided. “I ain’t going to mess it 
about.” 

Afterwards he did pull both the ripping- and 
the valve-cords, but, as Mr. Butteridge had al- 
ready discovered, they had fouled a fold of silk 
in the throat. Nothing happened. But for that 
little hitch the ripping-cord would have torn the 
balloon open as though it had been slashed by a 
sword, and hurled Mr. Smallways to eternity at 
the rate of some thousand feet a second. “No 
go!” he said, giving it a final tug. Then he 
lunched. 

He opened a bottle of champagne, which, as 
soon as he cut the wire, blew its cork out with 
incredible violence, and for the most part followed 
it into space. Bert, however, got about a tum- 
blerful. “Atmospheric pressure,” said Bert, 
finding a use at last for the elementary physiog- 


THE BALLOON 


73 


raphy of his seventh-standard days. “I'll have 
to be more careful next time. No good wastin' 
drink." 

Then he routed about for matches to utilise 
Mr. Butteridge's cigars; but here again luck was 
on his side, and he couldn't find any wherewith 
to set light to the gas above him. Or else he would 
have dropped in a flare, a splendid but transitory 
pyrotechnic display. “ 'Eng old Grubb!" said 
Bert, slapping unproductive pockets. “'E didn't 
ought to 'ave kep' my box. 'E's always sneaking 
matches." 

He reposed for a time. Then he got up, pad- 
died about, rearranged the ballast bags on the 
floor, watched the clouds for a time, and turned 
over the maps on the locker. Bert liked maps, 
and he spent some time in trying to find one of 
France or the Channel; but they were all British 
ordnance maps of English counties. That set 
him thinking about languages and trying to recall 
his seventh-standard French. “Je suis Anglais. 
C'est une meprise. Je suis arrive par accident 
ici," he decided upon as convenient phrases. 
Then it occurred to him that he would entertain 
himself by reading Mr. Butteridge's letters and 
examining his pocket-book, and in this manner he 
whiled away the afternoon. 

§ 2 

He sat upon the padded locker, wrapped about 
very carefully, for the air, though calm, was ex- 
hilaratingly cold and clear. He was wearing first 
a modest suit of blue serge and all the unpretending 


74 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


underwear of a suburban young man of fashion, 
with sandal-like cycling-shoes and brown stockings 
drawn over his trouser ends ; then the perforated 
sheet proper to a Desert Dervish ; then the coat 
and waistcoat and big fur-trimmed overcoat of 
Mr. Butteridge ; then a lady’s large fur cloak, and 
round his knees a blanket. Over his head was 
a tow wig, surmounted by a large cap of Mr. 
Butteridge’s with the flaps down over his ears. 
And some fur sleeping-boots of Mr. Butteridge’s 
warmed his feet. The car of the balloon was small 
and neat, some bags of ballast the untidiest of its 
contents, and he had found a light folding-table 
and put it at his elbow, and on that was a glass 
with champagne. And about him, above and 
below, was space — such a clear emptiness and 
silence of space as only the aeronaut can expe- 
rience. 

He did not know where he might be drifting, 
or what might happen next. He accepted this 
state of affairs with a serenity creditable to the 
Smallways’ courage, which one might reasonably 
have expected to be of a more degenerate and 
contemptible quality altogether. His impression 
was that he was bound to come down somewhere, 
and that then, if he wasn’t smashed, some one, 
some “ society” perhaps, would probably pack 
him and the balloon back to England. If not, 
he would ask very firmly for the British Consul. 
“Le consuelo Britannique,” he decided this would 
be. “Apportez moi a le consuelo Britannique, 
s’il vous plait,” he would say, for he was by no 
means ignorant of French. In the meanwhile 


THE BALLOON 


75 


he found the intimate aspects of Mr. Butteridge 
an interesting study. 

There were letters of an entirely private charac- 
ter addressed to Mr. Butteridge, and among others 
several love-letters of a devouring sort in a large 
feminine hand. These are no business of ours, 
and one remarks with regret that Bert read them. 

When he had read them he remarked, “Gollys !” 
in an awe-stricken tone, and then, after a long 
interval, “I wonder if that was her? 

“Lord!” 

He mused for a time. 

He resumed his exploration of the Butteridge 
interior. It included a number of press cuttings 
of interviews and also several letters in German, 
then some in the same German handwriting, but 
in English. “Hul -Iq!” said Bert. 

One of the latter, the first he took, began with 
an apology to Butteridge for not writing to him in 
English before, and for the inconvenience and delay 
that had been caused him by that, and went on 
to matter that Bert found exciting in the highest 
degree. “ We can understand entirely the difficul- 
ties of your position, and that you shall possibly 
be watched at the present juncture. But, sir, 
we do not believe that any serious obstacles will 
be put in your way if you wished to endeavour to 
leave the country and come to us with your plans 
by the customary routes — either via Dover, 
Ostend, Boulogne, or Dieppe. We find it difficult 
to think you are right in supposing yourself to be in 
danger of murder for your invaluable invention.” 

“ Funny !” said Bert, and meditated. 


76 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


Then he went through the other letters. 

“They seem to want him to come/’ said Bert; 
“but they don’t seem hurting themselves to get 
’im. Or else they’re shamming don’t care to get 
his prices down. 

“They don’t quite seem to be the gov’ment,” 
he reflected, after an interval. “It’s more like 
some firm’s paper. All this printed stuff at the 
top. Drachenflieger. Drachenballons. Ballon - 
stoffe. Kugelballons. Greek to me. 

“But he was trying to sell his blessed secret 
abroad. That’s all right. No Greek about that ! 
Gollys ! Here is the secret!” 

He tumbled off the seat, opened the locker, 
and had the portfolio open before him on the fold- 
ing-table. It was full of drawings done in the 
peculiar flat style and conventional colours en- 
gineers adopt. And, in addition, there were some 
rather under-exposed photographs, obviously done 
by an amateur at close quarters, of the actual 
machine Butteridge had made, in its shed near the 
Crystal Palace. Bert found he was trembling. 
“Lord!” he said, “here am I and the whole 
blessed secret of flying — lost up here on the roof 
of everywhere. 

“Let’s see !” He fell to studying the drawings 
and comparing them with the photographs. They 
puzzled him. Half of them seemed to be missing. 
He tried to imagine how they fitted together, and 
found the effort too great for his mind. 

“It’s tryin’,” said Bert. “I wish I’d been 
brought up to the engineering. If I could only 
make it out !” 


THE BALLOON 


77 


He went to the side of the car and remained 
for a time staring with unseeing eyes at a huge 
cluster of great clouds — a cluster of slowly dis- 
solving Monte Rosas, sunlit below. His attention 
was arrested by a strange black spot that moved 
over them. It alarmed him. It was a black spot 
moving slowly with him far below, following him 
down there, indefatigably over the cloud moun- 
tains. Why should such a thing follow him? 
What could it be? . . . 

He had an inspiration. “Uv course !” he said. 
It was the shadow of the balloon. But he still 
watched it dubiously for a time. 

He returned to the plans on the table. 

He spent a long afternoon between his struggles 
to understand them and fits of meditation. He 
evolved a remarkable new sentence in French. 
“Voici, Mossoo ! — Je suis un inventeur Anglais. 
Mon nom est Butteridge. Beh. oo. teh. teh. eh. 
arr. E. deh. geh. eh. J’avais ici pour vendre le 
secret de le flying-machine. Gomprenez? Vendre 
pour L argent tout suite, Largent en main. Com- 
prenez? C'est le machine a jouer dans Lair. 
Comprenez? C’est le machine a faire Loiseau. 
Comprenez ? Balancer ? Oui, exactement ! Bat- 
tir Loiseau en fait, a son propre jeu. Je desire 
de vendre ceci a votre government national. 
Voulez vous me directer la? 

“Bit rummy, I expect, from the point of view 
of grammar,” said Bert, “but they ought to get 
the hang of it all right. 

“But then, if they arst me to explain the blessed 
thing?” 


78 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


He returned in a worried way to the plans. “I 
don’t believe it’s all here !” he said. . . . 

He got more and more perplexed up there 
among the clouds as to what he should do with this 
wonderful find of his. At any moment, so far as 
he knew, he might descend among he knew not 
w T hat foreign people. 

“It's the chance of my life !” he said. 

It became more and more manifest to him that 
it wasn’t. “ Directly I come down they’ll tele- 
graph — put it in the papers. Butteridge’ll know 
of it and come along — on my track.” 

Butteridge would be a terrible person to be on 
any one’s track. Bert thought of the great 
black moustaches, the triangular nose, the search- 
ing bellow and the glare. His afternoon’s dream 
of a marvellous seizure and sale of the great But- 
teridge secret crumpled up in his mind, dissolved, 
and vanished. He awoke to sanity again. 

“ Wouldn’t do. What’s the good of thinking of 
it?” He proceeded slowly and reluctantly to re- 
place the Butteridge papers in pockets and port- 
folio as he had found them. He became aware of 
a splendid golden light upon the balloon above him, 
and of a new warmth in the blue dome of the sky. 
He stood up and beheld the sun, a great ball of 
blinding gold, setting upon a tumbled sea of gold- 
edged crimson and purple clouds, strange and 
wonderful beyond imagining. Eastward cloud- 
land stretched for ever, darkling blue, and it 
seemed to Bert the whole round hemisphere of the 
world was under his eyes. 

Then far away over the blue he caught sight of 


THE BALLOON 


79 


three long, dark shapes like hurrying fish that 
drove one after the other, as porpoises follow one 
another in the water. They were very fish-like 
indeed — with tails. It was an unconvincing im- 
pression in that light. He blinked his eyes, 
stared again, and they had vanished. For a long 
time he scrutinised those remote blue levels and 
saw no more. . . . 

“ Wonder if I ever saw anything,” he said, and 
then: “There ain't such things. . . .” 

Down went the sun and down, not diving 
steeply, but passing northward as it sank, and 
then suddenly daylight and the expansive warmth 
of daylight had gone altogether, and the index of 
the statoscope quivered over to Descente. 

§ 3 

“Now what's going to 'appen?” said Bert. 

He found the cold, grey cloud wilderness 
rising towards him with a wide, slow steadiness. 
As he sank down among them the clouds ceased 
to seem the snowclad mountain-slopes they had 
resembled heretofore, became unsubstantial, con- 
fessed an immense silent drift and eddy in their 
substance. For a moment, when he was nearly 
among their twilight masses, his descent was 
checked. Then abruptly the sky was hidden, the 
last vestiges of daylight gone, and he was falling 
rapidly in an evening twilight through a whirl of 
fine snowflakes that streamed past him towards 
the zenith, that drifted in upon the things about 
him and melted, that touched his face with 


80 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


ghostly fingers. He shivered. His breath came 
smoking from his lips, and everything was in- 
stantly bedewed and wet. 

He had an impression of a snowstorm pouring 
with unexampled and increasing fury upward; 
then he realised that he was falling faster and 
faster. 

Imperceptibly a sound grew upon his ears. 
The great silence of the world was at an end. 
What was this confused sound? 

He craned his head over the side, concerned, 
perplexed. 

First he seemed to see, and then not to see. 
Then he saw clearly little edges of foam pursuing 
each other, and a wide waste of weltering waters 
below him. Far away was a pilot boat with a 
big sail bearing dim black letters, and a little 
pinkish-yellow light, and it was rolling and pitch- 
ing — rolling and pitching in a gale, while he 
could feel no wind at all. Soon the sound of 
waters was loud and near. He was dropping, 
dropping — into the sea ! 

He became convulsively active. 

“Ballast !” he cried, and seized a little sack 
from the floor, and heaved it overboard. He did 
not wait for the effect of that, but sent another 
after it. He looked over in time to see a minute 
white splash in the dim waters below him, and 
then he was back in the snow and clouds again. 

He sent out quite needlessly a third sack of 
ballast and a fourth, and presently had the im- 
mense satisfaction of soaring up out of the damp 
and chill into the clear, cold, upper air in which 





“ ‘ Ballast ! ’ 


HE CRIED, AND SEIZED A LITTLE SACK FROM TIIE 
FLOOR AND HEAVED IT OVERBOARD ” 


















































































































\ 
































































































































































































* 




















. 

























THE BALLOON 


81 


the day still lingered. “Thang-God he said, 
with all his heart. 

A few stars now had pierced the blue, and in 
the east there shone brightly a prolate moon. 

§ 4 

That first downward plunge filled Bert with a 
haunting sense of boundless waters below. It 
was a summer’s night, but it seemed to him, 
nevertheless, extraordinarily long. He had a 
feeling of insecurity that he fancied quite irra- 
tionally the sunrise would dispel. Also he was 
hungry. He felt, in the dark, in the locker, put 
his fingers in the Roman pie, and got some sand- 
wiches, and he also opened rather successfully a 
half-bottle of champagne. That warmed and re- 
stored him, he grumbled at Grubb about the 
matches, wrapped himself up warmly on the 
locker, and dozed for a time. He got up once or 
twice to make sure that he was still securely high 
above the sea. The first time the moonlit clouds 
were white and dense, and the shadow of the 
balloon ran athwart them like a dog that fol- 
lowed; afterwards they seemed thinner. As he 
lay still, staring up at the huge dark balloon 
above, he made a discovery. His — or rather 
Mr. Butteridge’s — waistcoat rustled as he 
breathed. It was lined with papers. But Bert 
could not see to get them out or examine them, 
much as he wished to do so. . . . 

He was awakened by the crowing of cocks, the 
barking of dogs, and a clamour of birds. He was 

Q 


82 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


driving slowly at a low level over a broad land 
lit golden by sunrise under a clear sky. He 
stared out upon hedgeless, well-cultivated fields 
intersected by roads, each lined with cable- 
bearing red poles. He had just passed over a 
compact, whitewashed village with a straight 
church tower and steep red-tiled roofs. A num- 
ber of peasants, men and women, in shiny blouses 
and lumpish footwear, stood regarding him, 
arrested on their way to work. He was so low 
that the end of his rope was trailing. 

He stared out at these people. “I wonder 
how you land,” he thought. 

“S’pose I ought to land?” 

He found himself drifting down towards a 
mono-rail line, and hastily flung out two or three 
handfuls of ballast to clear it. 

“Lemme see! One might say just ‘PrenezM 
Wish I knew the French for take hold of the 
rope! ... I suppose they are French?” 

He surveyed the country again. “ Might be 
Holland. Or Luxembourg. Or Lorraine ’s far 
as I know. Wonder what those big affairs over 
there are? Some sort of kiln. Prosperous-look- 
ing country. ...” 

The respectability of the country’s appearance 
awakened answering chords in his nature. 

“Make myself a bit ship-shape first,” he said. 

He resolved to rise a little and get rid of his 
wig (which now felt hot on his head), and so 
forth. He threw out a bag of ballast, and was 
astonished to find himself careering up through 
the air very rapidly. 


THE BALLOON 


83 


“Blow!” said Mr. Smallways. “I’ve over- 
done the ballast trick. . . . Wonder when I 
shall get down again? . . . brekfus’ on board, 
anyhow.” 

He removed his cap and wig, for the air was 
warm, and an improvident impulse made him 
cast the latter object overboard. The stato- 
scope responded with a vigorous swing to Mon- 
tee. 

“The blessed thing goes up if you only look 
overboard,” he remarked, and assailed the locker. 
He found among other items several tins of liquid 
cocoa containing explicit directions for opening 
that he followed with minute care. He pierced 
the bottom with the key provided in the holes 
indicated, and forthwith the can grew from cold 
to hotter and hotter, until at last he could scarcely 
touch it, and then he opened the can at the other 
end, and there was his cocoa smoking, without the 
use of match or flame of any sort. It was an old 
invention, but new to Bert. There was also ham 
and marmalade and bread, so that he had a really 
very tolerable breakfast indeed. 

Then he took off his overcoat, for the sunshine 
was now inclined to be hot, and that reminded 
him of the rustling he had heard in the night. He 
took off the waistcoat and examined it. “Old 
Butteridge won't like me unpicking this.” He 
hesitated, and finally proceeded to unpick it. He 
found the missing drawings of the lateral rotating 
planes, on which the whole stability of the flying- 
machine depended. 

An observant angel would have seen Bert 


84 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


sitting for a long time after this discovery in a 
state of intense meditation. Then at last he rose 
with an air of inspiration, took Mr. Butteridge’s 
ripped, demolished, and ransacked waistcoat, and 
hurled it from the balloon — whence it fluttered 
down slowly and eddyingly until at last it came 
to rest with a contented flop upon the face of a 
German tourist sleeping peacefully beside the 
Hohenweg near Wildbad. Also this sent the 
balloon higher, and so into a position still more 
convenient for observation by our imaginary 
angel, who would next have seen Mr. Smallways 
tear open his own jacket and waistcoat, remove 
his collar, open his shirt, thrust his hand into his 
bosom, and tear his heart out — or at least, if 
not his heart, some large bright scajdet object. 
If the observer, overcoming a thrill of celestial 
horror, had scrutinised this scarlet object more 
narrowly, one of Bert’s most cherished secrets, 
one of his essential weaknesses, would have been 
laid bare. It was a red-flannel chest-protector, 
one of those large quasi-hygienic objects that with 
pills and medicines take the place of beneficial 
relics and images among the Protestant peoples 
of Christendom. Always Bert wore this thing; 
it was his cherished delusion, based on the advice 
of a shilling fortune-teller at Margate, that he was 
weak in the lungs. 

He now proceeded to unbutton his fetish, to 
attack it with a penknife, and to thrust the new- 
found plans between the two layers of imitation 
Saxony flannel of which it was made. Then with 
the help of Mr. Butteridge’s small shaving-mirror 


THE BALLOON 


85 


and his folding canvas basin he readjusted his 
costume with the gravity of a man who has taken 
an irrevocable step in life, buttoned up his jacket, 
cast the white sheet of the Desert Dervish on one 
side, washed temperately, shaved, resumed the big 
cap and the fur overcoat, and, much refreshed by 
these exercises, surveyed the country below him. 

It was indeed a spectacle of incredible magnifi- 
cence. If perhaps it was not so strange and 
magnificent as the sunlit cloudland of the pre- 
vious day, it was at any rate infinitely more inter- 
esting. The air was at its utmost clearness, and 
except to the south and south-west there was not 
a cloud in the sky. The country was hilly, with 
occasional fir plantations and bleak upland spaces, 
but also with numerous farms, and the hills were 
deeply intersected by the gorges of several wind- 
ing rivers interrupted at intervals by the banked- 
up ponds and weirs of electric generating wheels. 
It was dotted with bright-looking, steep-roofed 
villages, and each showed a distinctive and inter- 
esting church beside its wireless telegraph steeple ; 
here and there were large chateaux and parks and 
white roads, and paths lined with red and white 
cable posts were extremely conspicuous in the 
landscape. There were walled enclosures like 
gardens and rickyards and great roofs of barns and 
many electric dairy centres. The uplands were 
mottled with cattle. At places he would see the 
track of one of the old rail-roads (converted now 
to mono-rails) dodging through tunnels and cross- 
ing embankments, and a rushing hum would 
mark the passing of a train. Everything was 


86 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


extraordinarily clear as well as minute. Once or 
twice he saw guns and soldiers, and was reminded 
of the stir of military preparations he had witnessed 
on the Bank Holiday in England ; but there was 
nothing to tell him that these military prepara- 
tions were abnormal or to explain an occasional 
faint irregular firing of guns that drifted up to 
him. ... 

“Wish I knew how to get down,” said Bert, 
ten thousand feet or so above it all, and gave 
himself to much futile tugging at the red and 
white cords. Afterwards he made a sort of inven- 
tory of the provisions. Life in the high air was 
giving him an appalling appetite, and it seemed 
to him discreet at this stage to portion out his 
supply into rations. So far as he could see he 
might pass a week in the air. 

At first all the vast panorama below had been 
as silent as a painted picture. But as the day 
wore on and the gas diffused slowly from the 
balloon, it sank earthward again, details increased, 
men became more visible, and he began to hear 
the whistle and moan of trains and cars, sounds of 
cattle, bugles and kettle drums, and presently 
even men’s voices. And at last his guide-rope was 
trailing again, and he found it possible to attempt 
a landing. Once or twice as the rope dragged 
over cables he found his hair erect with electricity, 
and once he had a slight shock, and sparks snapped 
about the car. He took these things among the 
chances of the voyage. He had one idea now very 
clear in his mind, and that was to drop the iron 
grapnel that hung from the ring. 


THE BALLOON 


87 


From the first this attempt was unfortunate, 
perhaps because the place for descent was ill- 
chosen. A balloon should come down in an empty 
open space, and he chose a crowd. He made his 
decision suddenly, and without proper reflection. 
As he trailed, Bert saw ahead of him one of the 
most attractive little towns in the world — a 
cluster of steep gables surmounted by a high 
church tower and diversified with trees, walled, 
and with a fine, large gateway opening out upon 
a tree-lined high road. All the wires and cables 
of the countryside converged upon it like guests 
to entertainment. It had a most home-like and 
comfortable quality, and it was made gayer by 
abundant flags. Along the road a quantity of 
peasant folk, in big pair-wheeled carts and afoot, 
were coming and going, besides an occasional 
mono-rail car; and at the car-junction, under the 
trees outside the town, was a busy little fair of 
booths. It seemed a warm, human, well-rooted, 
and altogether delightful place to Bert. He 
came low over the tree-tops, with his grapnel 
ready to throw and so anchor him — a curious, 
interested, and interesting guest, so his imagina- 
tion figured it, in the very middle of it all. 

He thought of himself performing feats with 
the sign language and chance linguistics amidst a 
circle of admiring rustics. . . . 

And then the chapter of adverse accidents began. 

The rope made itself unpopular long before 
the crowd had fully realised his advent over the 
trees. An elderly and apparently intoxicated 
peasant in a shiny black hat, and carrying a 


88 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


large crimson umbrella, caught sight of it first 
as it trailed past him, and was seized with a dis- 
creditable ambition to kill it. He pursued it 
briskly with unpleasant cries. It crossed the 
road obliquely, splashed into a pan of milk upon 
a stall, and slapped its milky tail athwart a 
motor-car load of factory girls halted outside the 
town gates. They screamed loudly. People 
looked up and saw Bert making what he meant 
to be genial salutations, but what they con- 
sidered, in view of the feminine outcry, to be 
insulting gestures. Then the car hit the roof of 
the gatehouse smartly, snapped a flag staff, 
played a tune upon some telegraph wires, and 
sent a broken wire like a whip-lash to do its 
share in accumulating unpopularity. Bert, by 
clutching convulsively, just escaped being pitched 
headlong. Two young soldiers and several peas- 
ants shouted things up to him and shook fists at 
him and began to run in pursuit as he disappeared 
over the wall into the town. 

Admiring rustics, indeed ! 

The balloon leapt at once, in the manner of 
balloons when part of their weight is released by 
touching down, with a sort of flippancy, and in 
another moment Bert was over a street crowded 
with peasants and soldiers, that opened into a 
busy market-square. The wave of unfriendliness 
pursued him. 

“Grapnel,” said Bert, and then with an after- 
thought shouted, u Tetes there, you! I say! I 
say! Tetes. ’Engit!” 

The grapnel smashed down a steeply sloping 


THE BALLOON 


89 


roof, followed by an avalanche of broken tiles, 
jumped the street amidst shrieks and cries, and 
smashed into a plate-glass window with an im- 
mense and sickening impact. The balloon rolled 
nauseatingly, and the car pitched. But the 
grapnel had not held. It emerged at once bear- 
ing on one fluke, with a ridiculous air of fastidi- 
ous selection, a small child’s chair, and pursued 
by a maddened shopman. It lifted its catch, 
swung about with an appearance of painful in- 
decision amidst a roar of wrath, and dropped it 
at last neatly, and as if by inspiration, over the 
head of a peasant woman in charge of an assort- 
ment of cabbages in the market-place. 

Everybody now was aware of the balloon. 
Everybody was either trying to dodge the grap- 
nel or catch the trail rope. With a pendulum- 
like swoop through the crowd, that sent people 
flying right and left, the grapnel came to earth 
again, tried for and missed a stout gentleman in 
a blue suit and a straw hat, smacked away a 
trestle from under a stall of haberdashery, made 
a cyclist soldier in knickerbockers leap like a 
chamois, and secured itself uncertainly among 
the hind-legs of a sheep — which made convul- 
sive, ungenerous efforts to free itself, and was 
dragged into a position of rest against a stone 
cross in the middle of the place. The balloon 
pulled up with a jerk. In another moment a 
score of willing hands were tugging it earthward. 
At the same instant Bert became aware for the 
first time of a fresh breeze blowing about him. 

For some seconds he stood staggering in the 


90 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


car, which now swayed sickeningly, surveying the 
exasperated crowd below him and trying to col- 
lect his mind. He was extraordinarily astonished 
at this run of mishaps. Were the people really 
so annoyed ? Everybody seemed angry with 
him. No one seemed interested or amused by 
his arrival. A disproportionate amount of the 
outcry had the flavour of imprecation — had, in- 
deed, a strong flavour of riot. Several greatly 
uniformed officials in cocked hats struggled in 
vain to control the crowd. Fists and sticks were 
shaken. And when Bert saw a man on the out- 
skirts of the crowd run to a haycart and get a 
brightly pronged pitch-fork, and a blue-clad 
soldier unbuckle his belt, his rising doubt whether 
this little town was after all such a good place for 
a landing became a certainty. 

He had clung to the fancy that they would 
make something of a hero of him. Now he knew 
that he was mistaken. 

He was perhaps ten feet above the people 
when he made his decision. His paralysis 
ceased. He leapt up on the seat, and, at im- 
minent risk of falling headlong, released the 
grapnel-rope from the toggle that held it, sprang 
on to the trail rope and disengaged that also. A 
hoarse shout of disgust greeted the descent of the 
grapnel-rope and the swift leap of the balloon, 
and something — he fancied afterwards it was a 
turnip — whizzed by his head. The trail-rope 
followed its fellow. The crowd seemed to jump 
away from him. With an immense and horrify- 
ing rustle the balloon brushed against a tele- 


THE BALLOON 


91 


phone pole, and for a tense instant he anticipated 
either an electric explosion or a bursting of the 
oiled silk, or both. But fortune was with him. 

In another second he was cowering in the 
bottom of the car, and, released from the weight 
of the grapnel and the two ropes, rushing up 
once more through the air. For a time he re- 
mained crouching, and when at last he looked 
out again the little town was very small and 
travelling, with the rest of lower Germany, in a 
circular orbit round and round the car — or at 
least it appeared to be doing that. When he got 
used to it, he found this rotation of the balloon 
rather convenient ; it saved moving about in the 
car. 

§ 5 

Late in the afternoon of a pleasant summer 
day in the year 191-, if one may borrow a mode 
of phrasing that once found favour with the 
readers of the late G. P. R. James, a solitary 
balloonist — replacing the solitary horseman of 
the classic romances — might have been ob- 
served wending his way across Franconia in a 
north-easterly direction, and at a height of about 
eleven thousand feet above the sea and still 
spinning slowly. His head was craned over the 
side of the car, and he surveyed the country be- 
low with an expression of profound perplexity; 
ever and again his lips shaped inaudible words. 
“Shootin' at a chap,” for example, and “I'll 
come down right enough soon as I find out W.” 
Over the side of the basket the robe of the Desert 


92 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


Dervish was hanging, an appeal for considera- 
tion, an ineffectual white flag. 

He was now very distinctly aware that the 
world below him, so far from being the naive 
countryside of his earlier imaginings that day, 
sleepily unconscious of him and capable of being 
amazed and nearly reverential at his descent, 
was acutely irritated by his career, and extremely 
impatient with the course he was taking. But 
indeed it was not he who took that course, but 
his masters, the winds of heaven. Mysterious 
voices spoke to him in his ear, jerking the words 
up to him by means of megaphones, in a weird 
and startling manner, in a great variety of lan- 
guages. Official-looking persons had signalled to 
him by means of flag flapping and arm waving. 
On the whole a guttural variant of English pre- 
vailed in the sentences that alighted upon the 
balloon; chiefly he was told to “gome down 
or you will be shot.” 

“All very well,” said Bert, “but ’ow?” 

Then they shot a little wide of the car. Lat- 
terly he had been shot at six or seven times, and 
once the bullet had gone by with a sound so 
persuasively like the tearing of silk that he had 
resigned himself to the prospect of a headlong 
fall. But either they were aiming near, him or 
they had missed, and as yet nothing was torn 
but the air about him — and his anxious soul. 

He was now enjoying a respite from these at- 
tentions, but he felt it was at best an interlude, 
and he was doing what he could to appreciate 
his position. Incidentally he was having some 


THE BALLOON 


93 


hot coffee and pie in an untidy inadvertent man- 
ner, with an eye fluttering nervously over the side 
of the car. At first he had ascribed the growing 
interest in his career to his ill-conceived attempt 
to land in the bright little upland town, but now 
he was beginning to realise that the military 
rather than the civil arm was concerned about 
him. 

He was quite involuntarily playing that weird 
mysterious part — the part of an International 
Spy. He was seeing secret things. He had, in 
fact, crossed the designs of no less a power than 
the German Empire, he had blundered into the 
hot focus of Welt-Politik, he was drifting help- 
lessly towards the great Imperial secret, the im- 
mense aeronautic park that had been established 
at a headlong pace in Franconia to 'develop 
silently, swiftly, and on an immense scale the 
great discoveries of Hunstedt and Stossel, and 
so to give Germany before all other nations a 
fleet of airships, the air power and the Empire 
of the world. 

Later, just before they shot him down alto- 
gether, Bert saw that great area ‘of passionate 
work, warm lit in the evening light, a great area 
of upland on which the airships lay like a herd 
of grazing monsters at their feed. It was a vast 
busy space stretching away northward as far as 
he could see, methodically cut up into numbered 
sheds, gasometers, squad encampments, storage 
areas, interlaced with the omnipresent mono- 
rail lines, and altogether free from overhead 
wires or cables. Everywhere was the white, 


94 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


black and yellow of Imperial Germany, every- 
where the black eagles spread their wings. Even 
without these indications, the large vigorous 
neatness of everything would have marked it 
German. Vast multitudes of men went to and 
fro, many in white and drab fatigue uniforms 
busy about the balloons, others drilling in sen- 
sible drab. Here and there a full uniform glit- 
tered. The airships chiefly engaged his attention, 
and he knew at once it was three of these he had 
seen on the previous night, taking advantage of 
the cloud welkin to manoeuvre unobserved. 
They were altogether fish-like. For the great 
airships with which Germany attacked New York 
in her last gigantic effort for world supremacy 
— before humanity realized that world suprem- 
acy was a dream — were the lineal descendants 
of the Zeppelin airship that flew over Lake Con- 
stance in 1906, and of the Lebaudy navigables 
- that made their memorable excursions over Paris 
in 1907 and 1908. 

These German airships were held together 
by rib-like skeletons of steel and aluminium and 
a stout inelastic canvas outer-skin, within which 
was an impervious rubber gas-bag, cut up by 
transverse dissepiments into from fifty to a hun- 
dred compartments. These were all absolutely 
gas tight and filled with hydrogen, and the entire 
aerostat was kept at any level by means of a 
long internal balloonette of oiled and toughened 
silk canvas, into which air could be forced and 
from which it could be pumped. So the airship 
could be made either heavier or lighter than air, 


THE BALLOON 


95 


and losses of weight through the consumption 
of fuel, the casting of bombs and so forth, could 
also be compensated by admitting air to sections 
of the general gas-bag. Ultimately that made 
a highly explosive mixture; but in all these 
matters risks must be taken and guarded against. 
There was a steel axis to the whole affair, a 
central backbone which terminated in the engine 
and propeller, and the men and magazines were 
forward in a series of cabins under the expanded 
headlike forepart. The engine, which was of 
the extraordinarily powerful Pforzheim type, 
that supreme triumph of German invention, was 
worked by wires from this forepart, which was 
indeed the only really habitable part of the ship. 
If anything went wrong, the engineers went aft 
along a rope ladder beneath the frame. The 
tendency of the whole affair to roll was partly 
corrected by a horizontal lateral fin on either 
side, and steering was chiefly effected by two 
vertical fins, which normally lay back like gill- 
flaps on either side of th^ head. It was indeed 
a most complete adaptation of the fish form 
to aerial conditions, the position of swimming 
bladder, eyes, and brain being, however, below 
instead of above. A striking and unfish-like 
feature was the apparatus for wireless telegraphy 
that dangled from the forward cabin — that 
is to say, under the chin of the fish. 

These monsters were capable of ninety miles 
an hour in a calm, so that they could face and 
make headway against nearly everything except 
the fiercest tornado. They varied in length 


96 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


from eight hundred to two thousand feet, and 
they had a carrying power of from seventy to 
two hundred tons. How many Germany pos- 
sessed history does not record, but Bert counted 
nearly eighty great bulks receding in perspective 
during his brief inspection. Such were the in- 
struments on which she chiefly relied to sustain 
her in her repudiation of the Monroe Doctrine 
and her bold bid for a share in the empire of the 
New World. But not altogether did she rely 
on these ; she had also a one-man bomb-throwing 
Drachenflieger of unknown value among the re- 
sources. 

But the Drachenflieger were away in the se- 
cond great aeronautic park east of Hamburg, 
and Bert Smallways saw nothing of them in the 
bird's-eye view he took of the Franconian es- 
tablishment before they shot him down. For 
they shot him down very neatly. The bullet 
tore past him and made a sort of pop as it pierced 
his balloon — a pop that was followed by a 
rustling sigh and a steady downward movement. 
And when in the confusion of the moment he 
dropped a bag of ballast, the Germans very 
politely but firmly overcame his scruples by 
shooting his balloon again twice. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 

§1 

Of all the productions of the human imagination 
that make the world in which Mr. Bert Smallways 
lived confusingly wonderful, there w~as none quite 
so strange, so headlong and disturbing, so noisy 
and persuasive and dangerous, as the modernisa- 
tions of patriotism produced by imperial and 
international politics. In the soul of all men is a 
liking for kind, a pride in one’s own atmosphere, a 
tenderness for one’s mother speech and one’s 
familiar land. Before the coming of the Scientific 
Age this group of gentle and noble emotions had 
been a fine factor in the equipment of every worthy 
human being, a fine factor that had its less amiable 
aspect in a usually harmless hostility to strange 
people, and a usually harmless detraction of 
strange lands. But with the wild rush of change 
in the pace, scope, materials, scale, and possibili- 
ties of human life that then occurred, the old 
boundaries, ^the old seclusions and separations 
were violently broken down. All the old settled 
mental habits and traditions of men found them- 
selves not simply confronted by new conditions, 
but by constantly renewed and changing new 
h 97 


98 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


conditions. They had no chance of adapting 
themselves. They were annihilated or perverted 
or inflamed beyond recognition. 

Bert Smallways’ grandfather, in the days when 
Bun Hill was a village under the sway of Sir Peter 
Bone’s parent, had “ known his place” to the 
uttermost farthing, touched his hat to his betters, 
despised and condescended to his inferiors, and 
hadn’t changed an idea from the cradle to the 
grave. He was Kentish and English, and that 
meant hops, beer, dog-roses, and the sort of 
sunshine that was best in the world. News- 
papers and politics and visits to “Lunnon” 
weren’t for the likes of him. Then came the 
change. These earlier chapters have given an 
idea of what happened to Bun Hill, and how 
the flood of novel things had poured over its 
devoted rusticity. Bert Smallways was only one 
of countless millions in Europe and America 
and Asia who, instead of being born rooted in the 
soil, were born struggling in a torrent they never 
clearly understood. All the faiths of their fathers 
had been taken by surprise, and startled into 
the strangest forms and reactions. Particularly 
did the fine old tradition of patriotism get per- 
verted and distorted in the rush of the new times. 
Instead of the sturdy establishment in prejudice 
of Bert’s grandfather, to whom the word “ Frenchi- 
fied” was the ultimate term of contempt, there 
flowed through Bert’s brain a squittering suc- 
cession of thinly violent ideas about German 
competition, about the Yellow Danger, about the 
Black Peril, about the White Man’s Burthen — - 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


99 


that is to say, Bert's preposterous right to muddle 
further the naturally very muddled politics of 
the entirely similar little cads to himself (except 
for a smear of brown) who smoked cigarettes 
and rode bicycles in Buluwayo, Kingston (Ja- 
maica), or Bombay. These were Bert's “ Sub- 
ject Races," and he was ready to die — by 
proxy in the person of any one who cared to 
enlist — to maintain his hold upon that right. 
It kept him awake at nights to think that he 
might lose it. 

The essential fact of the politics of the age in 
which Bert Smallways lived — the age that 
blundered at last into the catastrophe of the 
War in the Air — was a very simple one, if only 
people had had the intelligence to be simple 
about it. The development of Science had 
altered the scale of human affairs. By means 
of rapid mechanical traction it had brought men 
nearer together, so much nearer socially, economi- 
cally, physically, that the old separations into 
nations and kingdoms were no longer possible, 
a newer, wider synthesis was not only needed, 
but imperatively demanded. Just as the once 
independent dukedoms of France had to fuse 
into a nation, so now the nations had to adapt 
themselves to a wider coalescence, they had 
to keep what was precious and possible, and 
concede what was obsolete and dangerous. A 
saner world would have perceived this patent 
need for a reasonable synthesis, would have 
discussed it temperately, achieved and gone on 
to organise the great civilisation that was mani- 


100 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


festly possible to mankind. The world of Bert 
Smallways did nothing of the sort. Its national 
governments, its national interests, would not 
hear of anything so obvious; they were too sus- 
picious of each other, too wanting in generous 
imaginations. They began to behave like ill- 
bred people in a crowded public car, to squeeze 
against one another, elbow, thrust, dispute and 
quarrel. Vain to point out to them that they 
had only to rearrange themselves to be com- 
fortable. Everywhere, all over the world, the 
historian of the early twentieth century finds the 
same thing, the flow and rearrangement of 
human affairs inextricably entangled, by the old 
areas, the old prejudices and a sort of heated 
irascible stupidity, and everywhere congested 
nations in inconvenient areas, slopping popu- 
lation and produce into each other, annoying 
each other with tariffs and every possible com- 
mercial vexation, and threatening each other 
with navies and armies that grew every year 
more portentous. 

It is impossible now to estimate how much of 
the intellectual and physical energy of the world 
was wasted in military preparation and equip- 
ment, but it was an enormous proportion. Great 
Britain spent upon army and navy money and 
capacity that directed into the channels of 
physical culture and education would have made 
the British the aristocracy of the world. Her 
rulers could have kept the whole population 
learning and exercising up to the age of eighteen, 
and made a broad-chested and intelligent man 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


101 


of every Bert Smallways in the islands, had 
they given the resources they spent in war ma- 
terial to the making of men. Instead of which 
they waggled flags at him until he was fourteen, 
incited him to cheer, and then turned him out 
of school to begin that career of private enterprise 
we have compactly recorded. France achieved 
similar imbecilities; Germany was, if possible, 
worse; Russia under the waste and stresses of 
militarism festered towards bankruptcy and de- 
cay. All Europe was producing big guns and 
countless swarms of little Smallways. The Asiatic 
peoples had been forced in self-defence into a 
like diversion of the new powers science had 
brought them. On the eve of the outbreak of 
the war there were six great powers in the world 
and a cluster of smaller ones, each armed to 
the teeth and straining every nerve to get ahead 
of the others in deadliness of equipment and 
military efficiency. The great powers were first 
the United States, a nation addicted to com- 
merce, but roused to military necessities by the 
efforts of Germany to expand into South America, 
and by the natural consequences of her own 
unwary annexations of land in the very teeth 
of Japan. She maintained two immense fleets 
east and west, and internally she was in violent 
conflict between Federal and State govern- 
ments upon the question of universal service in 
a defensive militia. Next came the great alli- 
ance of Eastern Asia, a close-knit coalescence 
of China and Japan, advancing with rapid strides 
year by year to predominance in the world’s 


102 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


affairs. Then the German alliance still struggled 
to achieve its dream of imperial expansion, and 
its imposition of the German language upon a 
forcibly united Europe. These were the three 
most spirited and aggressive powers in the 
world. Far more pacific was the British Em- 
pire, perilously scattered over the globe, and 
distracted now by insurrectionary movements 
in Ireland and among all its Subject Races. It 
had given these subject races cigarettes, boots, 
bowler hats, cricket, race meetings, cheap re- 
volvers, petroleum, the factory system of in- 
dustry, halfpenny newspapers in both English 
and the vernacular, inexpensive university de- 
grees, motor-bicycles and electric trams; it had 
produced a considerable literature expressing 
contempt for the Subject Races, and rendered it 
freely accessible to them, and it had been content 
to believe that nothing would result from these 
stimulants because somebody once wrote “the 
immemorial east” ; and also, in the inspired 
words of Kipling — 

East is east and west is west, 

And never the twain shall meet. 

Instead of which, Egypt, India, and the sub- 
ject countries generally had produced new gen- 
erations in a state of passionate indignation and 
the utmost energy, activity and modernity. The 
governing class in Great Britain was slowly adapt- 
ing itself to a new conception of the Subject 
Races as waking peoples, and finding its efforts 
to keep the Empire together under these strains 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


103 


and changing ideas greatly impeded by the en- 
tirely sporting spirit with which Bert Small- 
ways at home (by the million) cast his vote, and 
by the tendency of his more highly coloured 
equivalents to be disrespectful to irascible offi- 
cials. Their impertinence w T as excessive ; it was 
no mere stone-throwing and shouting. They 
would quote Bums at them and Mill and Darwin 
and confute them in arguments. 

Even more pacific than the British Empire 
were France and its allies, the Latin powers, 
heavily armed states indeed, but reluctant war- 
riors, and in many ways socially and politically 
leading western civilisation. Russia was a pacific 
power perforce, divided within itself, torn between 
revolutionaries and reactionaries who were equally 
incapable of social reconstruction, and so sinking 
towards a tragic disorder of chronic political ven- 
detta. Wedged in among these portentous larger 
bulks, swayed and threatened by them, the 
smaller states of the world maintained a precarious 
independence, each keeping itself armed as dan- 
gerously as its utmost ability could contrive. 

So it came about that in every country a great 
and growing body of energetic and inventive 
men was busied either for offensive or defensive 
ends, in elaborating the apparatus of war, until 
the accumulating tensions should reach the break- 
ing-point. Each power sought to keep its prepa- 
rations secret, to hold new weapons in reserve, 
to anticipate and learn the preparations of its 
rivals. The feeling of danger from fresh discov- 
eries affected the patriotic imagination of every 


104 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


people in the world. Now it was rumoured the 
British had an overwhelming gun, now the 
French an invincible rifle, now the Japanese a new 
explosive, now the Americans a submarine that 
would drive every ironclad from the seas. Each 
time there would be a war panic. 

The strength and heart of the nations was 
given to the thought of war, and yet the mass 
of their citizens was a teeming democracy as heed- 
less of and unfitted for fighting, mentally, morally, 
physically, as any population has ever been — 
or, one ventures to add, could ever be. That was 
the paradox of the time. It was a period alto- 
gether unique in the world’s history. The ap- 
paratus of warfare, the art and method of fighting, 
changed absolutely every dozen years in a stu- 
pendous progress towards perfection, and people 
grew less and less warlike, and there was no 
war. 

And then at last it came. It came as a surprise 
to all the world because its real causes were hid- 
den. Relations were strained between Germany 
and the United States because of the intense 
exasperation of a tariff conflict and the ambigu- 
ous attitude of the former power towards the Mon- 
roe Doctrine, and they were strained between 
the United States and Japan because of the per- 
ennial citizenship question. But in both cases 
these were standing causes of offence. The real 
deciding cause, it is now known, was the per- 
fecting of the Pforzheim engine by Germany 
and the consequent possibility of a rapid and 
entirely practicable airship. At that time Ger- 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


105 


many was by far the most efficient power in the 
world, better organised for swift and secret 
action, better equipped with the resources of 
modern science, and with her official and ad- 
ministrative classes at a higher level of education 
and training. These things she knew, and she 
exaggerated that knowledge to the pitch of con- 
tempt for the secret counsels of her neighbours. 
It may be that with the habit of self-confidence 
her spying upon them had grown less thorough. 
Moreover, she had a tradition of unsentimental 
and unscrupulous action that vitiated her inter- 
national outlook profoundly. With the coming 
of these new weapons her collective intelligence 
thrilled with the sense that now her moment had 
come. Once again in the history of progress 
it seemed she held the decisive weapon. Now she 
might strike and conquer — before the others had 
anything but experiments in the air. 

Particularly she must strike America swiftly, 
because there, if anywhere, lay the chance of an 
aerial rival. It was known that America pos- 
sessed a flying-machine of considerable practical 
value, developed out of the Wright model; but 
it was not supposed that the Washington War 
Office had made any wholesale attempts to create 
an aerial navy. It was necessary to strike before 
they could do so. France had a fleet of slow navi- ' 
gables, several dating from 1908, that could make 
no possible headway against the new type. They 
had been built solely for reconnoitring purposes 
on the eastern frontier, they were mostly too small 
to carry more than a couple of dozen men without 


106 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


arms or provisions, and not one could do forty 
miles an hour. Great Britain, it seemed, in an 
access of meanness, temporised and wrangled 
with the imperial spirited Butteridge and his ex- 
traordinary invention. That also was not in 
play — and could not be for some months at the 
earliest. From Asia there came no sign. The 
Germans explained this by saying the yellow peoples 
were without invention. No other competitor 
was worth considering. “Now or never , ” said 
the Germans — “now or never we may seize 
the air — as once the British seized the seas ! 
While all the other powers are still experiment- 
ing.^ 

Swift and systematic and secret were their 
preparations, and their plan most excellent. 
So far as their knowledge went, America was the 
only dangerous possibility; America, which was 
also now the leading trade rival of Germany and 
one of the chief barriers to her Imperial expansion. 
So at once they would strike at America. They 
would fling a great force across the Atlantic heav- 
ens and bear America down unwarned and un- 
prepared. 

Altogether it was a well-imagined and most 
hopeful and spirited enterprise, having regard 
to the information in the possession of the Ger- 
man government. The chances of it being a 
successful surprise were very great. The airship 
and the flying-machine were very different things 
from ironclads, which take a couple of years to 
build. Given hands, given plant, they could be 
made innumerably in a few weeks. Once the 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


107 


needful parks and foundries were organised, air- 
ships and Drachenflieger could be poured into the 
sky. Indeed, when the time came, they did pour 
into the sky like, as a bitter French writer put it, 
flies roused from filth. 

The attack upon America was to be the first 
move in this tremendous game. But no sooner 
had it started than instantly the aeronautic parks 
were to proceed to put together and inflate the 
second fleet which was to dominate Europe and 
manoeuvre significantly over London, Paris, Rome, 
St. Petersburg, or wherever else its moral effect 
was required. A World Surprise it was to be — 
no less, a World Conquest; and it is wonderful 
how near the calmly adventurous minds that 
planned it came to succeeding in their colossal 
design. 

Von Sternberg was the Moltke of this War in 
the Air, but it was the curious hard romanticism 
of Prince Karl Albert that won over the hesitating 
Emperor to the scheme. Prince Karl Albert 
was indeed the central figure of the world drama. 
He was the darling of the Imperialist spirit in Ger- 
many, and the ideal of the new aristocratic feel- 
ing — the new Chivalry, as it was called — that 
followed the overthrow of Socialism through its 
internal divisions and lack of discipline, and the 
concentration of wealth in the hands of a few great 
families. He was compared by obsequious flat- 
terers to the Black Prince, to Alcibiades, to the 
young Caesar. To many he seemed Nietzsche’s 
Overman revealed. He was big and blond and 
virile, and splendidly non-moral. The first great 


108 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


feat that startled Europe, and almost brought 
about a new Trojan war, was his abduction of the 
Princess Helena of Norway and his blank refusal 
to marry her. Then followed his marriage with 
Gretchen Krass, a Swiss girl of peerless beauty. 
Then came the gallant rescue, which almost cost 
him his life, of three drowning tailors whose boat 
had upset in the sea near Heligoland. For that 
and his victory over the American yacht Defender , 
C.C.I., the Emperor forgave him and placed 
him in control of the new aeronautic arm of the 
German forces. This he developed with mar- 
vellous energy and ability, being resolved, as he 
said, to give to Germany land and sea and sky. 
The national passion for aggression found in him 
its supreme exponent, and achieved through him 
its realisation in this astounding war. But his 
fascination was more than national; all over the 
world his ruthless strength dominated minds as 
the Napoleonic legend had dominated minds. 
Englishmen turned in disgust from the slow, 
complex, civilised methods of their national 
politics to this uncompromising, forceful figure. 
Frenchmen believed in him. Poems were written 
to him in American. 

He made the war. 

Quite equally with the rest of the world, the 
general German population was taken by surprise 
by the swift vigour of the Imperial government. 
A considerable literature of military forecasts, 
beginning as early as 1906 with Rudolf Martin, 
the author not merely of a brilliant book of an- 
ticipations, but of a proverb, “The future of Ger- 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


109 


many lies in the air,” had, however, partially 
prepared the German imagination for some such 
enterprise. 

§ 2 

Of all these world-forces and gigantic designs 
Bert Smallways knew nothing until he found him- 
self in the very focus of it all and gaped down 
amazed on the spectacle of that giant herd of air- 
ships. Each one seemed as long as the Strand, 
and as big about as Trafalgar Square. Some must 
have been a third of a mile in length. He had 
never before seen anything so vast and disciplined 
as this tremendous park. For the first time in 
his life he really had an intimation of the extraor- 
dinary and quite important things of which a 
contemporary may go in ignorance. He had al- 
ways clung to the illusion that Germans were fat, 
absurd men, who smoked china pipes, and were 
addicted to knowledge and horseflesh and sauer- 
kraut and indigestible things generally. 

His bird’s-eye view was quite transitory. 
He ducked at the first shot; and directly his 
balloon began to drop, his mind ran confusedly 
upon how he might explain himself, and whether 
he should pretend to be Butteridge or not. “0 
Lord!” he groaned, in an agony of indecision. 
Then his eye caught his sandals, and he felt a 
spasm of self-disgust. “They’ll think I’m a 
bloomin’ idiot,” he said, and then it was he rose 
up desperately and threw over the sand-bag and 
provoked the second and third shots. 

It flashed into his head, as he cowered in the 


110 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


bottom of the car, that he might avoid all sorts 
of disagreeable and complicated explanations by 
pretending to be mad. 

That was his last idea before the airships seemed 
to rush up about him as if to look at him, and 
his car hit the ground and bounded and pitched 
him out on his head. . . . 

He awoke to find himself famous, and to hear 
a voice crying, “Booteraidge ! Ja ! Ja ! Herr 
Booteraidge ! Selbst !” 

He was lying on a little patch of grass beside 
one of the main avenues of the aeronautic park. 
The airships receded down a great vista, an im- 
mense perspective, and the blunt prow of each 
was adorned with a black eagle of a hundred 
feet or so spread. Down the other side of the 
avenue ran a series of gas generators, and big 
hose-pipes trailed everywhere across the inter- 
vening space. Close at hand was his now nearly 
deflated balloon and the car on its side looking 
minutely small, a mere broken toy, a shrivelled 
bubble, in contrast with the gigantic bulk of the 
nearer airship. This he saw almost end-on, 
rising like a cliff and sloping forward towards its 
fellow on the other side so as to overshadow the 
alley between them. There was a crowd of ex- 
cited people about him, big men mostly in tight 
uniforms. Everybody was talking, and several 
were shouting, in German ; he knew that because 
they splashed and aspirated sounds like startled 
kittens. Only one phrase, repeated again and 
again, could he recognise — the name of “Herr 
Booteraidge. 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


111 


“Gollys!” said Bert. “They’ve spotted it.” 

“Besser,” said some one, and some rapid 
German followed. 

He perceived that close at hand was a field 
telephone, and that a tall officer in blue was 
talking thereat about him. Another stood close 
beside him with the portfolio of drawings and 
photographs in his hand. They looked round at 
him. 

“Do you spik Cherman, Herr Booteraidge ? ” 

Bert decided that he had better be dazed. He 
did his best to seem thoroughly dazed. “Where 
am I ?” he asked. 

Volubility prevailed. “Der Prinz,” was men- 
tioned. A bugle sounded far away, and its call 
was taken up by one nearer, and then by one 
close at hand. This seemed to increase the 
excitement greatly. A mono-rail car bumbled 
past. The telephone bell rang passionately, and 
the tall officer seemed to engage in a heated 
altercation. Then he approached the group about 
Bert, calling out something about “mitbringen.” 

An earnest-faced, emaciated man with a white 
moustache appealed to Bert. “Herr Booteraidge, 
sir, we are chust to start !” 

“Where am I?” Bert repeated. 

Some one shook him by the other shoulder. 
“Are you Herr Booteraidge?” he asked. 

“Herr Booteraidge, we are chust to start!” 
repeated the white moustache, and then help- 
lessly, “What is de goot? What can we 
do?” 

The officer from the telephone repeated his 


112 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


sentence about “Der Prinz” and “mitbringen.” 
The man with the moustache stared for a moment, 
grasped an idea and became violently energetic, 
stood up and bawled directions at unseen people. 
Questions were asked, and the doctor at Bert’s 
side answered, “Ja! Ja!” several times, also 
something about “Kopf.” With a certain ur- 
gency he got Bert rather unwillingly to his feet. 
Two huge soldiers in grey advanced upon Bert 
and seized hold of him. “’Ullo!” said Bert, 
startled. “ What’s up?” 

“It is all right,” the doctor explained; “they 
are to carry you.” 

“Where?” asked Bert, unanswered. 

“Put your arms roundt their — hats — round 
them!” 

“Yes! but where?” 

“Hold tight!” 

Before Bert could decide to say anything more 
he was whisked up by the two soldiers. They 
joined hands to seat him, and his arms were put 
about their necks. “Vorwarts!” Some one ran 
before him with the portfolio, and he was borne 
rapidly along the broad avenue between the gas 
generators and the airships, rapidly and on the 
whole smoothly except that once or twice his 
bearers stumbled over hose-pipes and nearly let 
him down. 

He was wearing Mr. Butteridge’s Alpine cap, 
and his little shoulders were in Mr. Butteridge’s 
fur-lined overcoat, and he had responded to Mr. 
Butteridge’s name. The sandals dangled help- 
lessly. Gaw ! Everybody seemed in a devil 







P 

' 

2jy 

nr 

1 


C" 


“He was carried joggling and gaping through the twilight, marvelling beyond measure 






THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


113 


of a hurry. Why? He was carried joggling and 
gaping through the twilight, marvelling beyond 
measure. 

The systematic arrangement of wide conven- 
ient spaces, the quantities of business-like soldiers 
everywhere, the occasional neat piles of material, 
the ubiquitous mono-rail lines, and the towering 
ship-like hulls about him, reminded him a little 
of impressions he had got as a boy on a visit to 
Woolwich Dockyard. The whole camp reflected 
the colossal power of modern science that had 
created it. A peculiar strangeness was produced 
by the lowness of the electric light, which lay 
upon the ground, casting all shadows upwards, 
and making a grotesque shadow figure of himself 
and his bearers on the airship sides, fusing all 
three of them into a monstrous animal with 
attenuated legs and an immense fan-like humped 
body. The lights were on the ground because as 
far as possible all poles and standards had been 
dispensed with to prevent complications when 
the airships rose. 

It was deep twilight now, a tranquil blue- 
skyed evening; everything rose out from the 
splashes of light upon the ground into dim trans- 
lucent tall masses; within the cavities of the 
airships small inspecting lamps glowed like cloud- 
veiled stars, and made them seem marvellously 
unsubstantial. Each airship had its name in 
black letters on white on either flank, and for- 
ward the Imperial eagle sprawled, an over- 
whelming bird in the dimness. Bugles sounded, 
mono-rail cars of quiet soldiers slithered burbling 


114 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


by. The cabins under the heads of the airships 
were being lit up ; doors opened in them, and 
revealed padded passages. Now and then a 
voice gave directions to workers indistinctly seen. 

There was a matter of sentinels, gangways 
and a long narrow passage, a scramble over a 
disorder of baggage, and then Bert found him- 
self lowered to the ground and standing in the 
doorway of a spacious cabin — it was perhaps 
ten feet square and eight high, furnished with 
crimson padding and aluminium. A tall, bird- 
like young man with a small head, a long nose, 
and very pale hair, with his hands full of things 
like shaving-strops, boot-trees, hair-brushes, and 
toilet tidies, was saying things about Gott and 
thunder and Dummer Booteraidge as Bert 
entered. He was apparently an evicted occupant. 
Then he vanished, and Bert was lying back on a 
couch in the corner with a pillow under his head 
and the door of the cabin shut upon him. He 
was alone. Everybody had hurried out again 
astonishingly. 

“ Golly s !” said Bert. “What next?” 

He stared about him at the room. 

“Butte ridge! Shall I try to keep it up, or 
shan’t I?” 

The room he was in puzzled him. “’Tisn’t 
a prison and ’tisn’t a norfis?” Then the old 
trouble came uppermost. “I wish to ’eaven I 
’adn’t these silly sandals on,” he cried queru- 
lously to the universe. “They give the whole 
blessed show away.” 



“A TALL, BIRD-LIKE YOUNG MAN WITH HIS HANDS 


FULL OF THINGS 














































































































































































































































THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


115 


§ 3 

His door was flung open, and a compact young 
man in uniform appeared, carrying Mr. But- 
teridge’s portfolio, riicksac, and shaving-glass. 
“I say !” he said in faultless English as he en- 
tered. He had a beaming face, and a sort of 
pinkish blond hair. “ Fancy you being But- 
te ridge !” 

He slapped Bert’s meagre luggage down. 

“ We’d have started,” he said, “in another half- 
hour ! You didn’t give yourself much time!” 

He surveyed Bert curiously. His gaze rested 
for a fraction of a moment on the sandals. “You 
ought to have come on your flying-machine, 
Mr. Butteridge.” 

He didn’t wait for an answer. “The Prince 
says I’ve got to look after you. Naturally he 
can’t see you now, but he thinks your coming’s 
providential. Last grace of Heaven. Like a 
sign. Hullo!” 

He stood still and listened. 

Outside there was a going to and fro of feet, 
a sound of distant bugles suddenly taken up 
and echoed close at hand, men called out in loud 
tones short, sharp, seemingly vital things, and 
were answered distantly. A bell jangled, and 
feet went down the corridor. Then came a still- 
ness more distracting than sound, and then a great 
gurgling and rushing and splashing of water. The 
young man’s eyebrows lifted. He hesitated, 
and dashed out of the room. Presently came a 
stupendous bang to vary the noises without, 


116 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


then a distant cheering. The young man re- 
appeared. 

“They’re running the water out of the bal- 
lonette already.” 

“What water?” asked Bert. 

“The water that anchored us. Artful dodge. 
Eh?” 

Bert tried to take it in. 

“Of course!” said . the compact young man. 
“You don’t understand.” 

A gentle quivering crept upon Bert’s senses. 
“That’s the engine,” said the compact young 
man approvingly. “Now we shan’t be 
long.” 

Another long listening interval. 

The cabin swayed. “By Jove! we’re starting 
already,” he cried. “We’re starting!” 

“Starting!” cried Bert, sitting up. “Where?” 

But the young man was out of the room again. 
There were noises of German in the passage, 
and other nerve-shaking sounds. 

The swaying increased. The young man re- 
appeared. “We’re off, right enough!” 

“I say!” said Bert, “where are we starting? 
I wish you’d explain. What’s this place ? I 
don’t understand.” 

“What!” cried the young man, “you don’t 
understand ? ” 

“No. I’m all dazed-like from that crack on 
the nob I got. Where are we? Where are we 
starting?” 

“Don’t you know where you are — what this 
is?” 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


117 


“Not a bit of it! What’s all the swaying 
and the row?” 

“What a lark!” cried the young man. “I 
say ! What a thundering lark ! Don’t you know ? 
We’re off to America, and you haven’t realised. 
You’ve just caught us by a neck. You’re on the 
blessed old flagship with the Prince. You won’t 
miss anything. Whatever’s on, you bet the 
Vaterland will be there.” 

“Us! — off to America?” 

“Ra — ther!” 

“In an airship?” 

“What do you think?” 

“Me! going to America on an airship! After 
that balloon ! ’Ere ! I say — I don’t want to 
go ! I want to walk about on my legs. Let 
me get out ! I didn’t understand.” 

He made a dive for the door. 

The young man arrested Bert with a gesture, 
took hold of a strap, lifted up a panel in the padded 
wall, and a window appeared. “Look!” he 
said. Side by side they looked out. 

“Gaw!” said Bert. “We’re going up!” 

“We are!” said the young man, cheerfully; 
“fast!” 

They were rising in the air smoothly and quietly, 
and moving slowly to the throb of the engine 
athwart the aeronautic park. Down below it 
stretched, dimly geometrical in the darkness, 
picked out at regular intervals by glow-worm 
spangles of light. One black gap in the long line 
of grey, round-backed airships marked the posi- 
tion from which the Vaterland had come. Be- 


118 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


side it a second monster now rose softly, released 
from its bonds and cables into the air. Then, 
taking a beautifully exact distance, a third as- 
cended, and then a fourth. 

“Too late, Mr. Butteridge !” the young man 
remarked. “We’re off! I daresay it is a bit 
of a shock to you, but there you are ! The Prince 
said you’d have to come.” 

“Look ’ere,” said Bert. “I really am dazed. 
What’s this thing? Where are we going?” 

“This, Mr. Butteridge,” said the young man, 
taking pains to be explicit, “is an airship. It’s 
the flagship of Prince Karl Albert. This is the 
German air-fleet, and it is going over to America, 
to give that spirited people ‘what for.’ The 
only thing we were at all uneasy about was your 
invention. And here you are!” 

“But! — you a German?” asked Bert. 

“Lieutenant Kurt. Luft-lieutenant Kurt, at 
your service.” 

“But you speak English !” 

“Mother was English — went to school in 
England. Afterwards, Rhodes scholar. Ger- 
man none the less for that. Detailed for the 
present, Mr. Butteridge, to look after you. 
You’re shaken by your fall. It’s all right, really. 
They’re going to buy your machine and every- 
thing. You sit down, and take it quite calmly. 
You’ll soon get the hang of the position.” 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


119 


§ 4 

Bert sat down on the locker, collecting his 
mind, and the young man talked to him about 
the airship. 

He was really a very tactful young man in- 
deed, in a natural sort of way. “ Daresay all 
this is new to you,” he said; “not your sort of 
machine. These cabins aren’t half bad.” 

He got up and walked round the little apart- 
ment, showing its points. 

“Here is the bed,” he said, whipping down a 
couch from the wall and throwing it back again 
with a click. “Here are toilet things,” and he 
opened a neatly arranged cupboard. “Not 
much washing. No water we’ve got; no water 
at all except for drinking. No baths or anything 
until we get to America and land. Rub over 
with loofah. One pint of hot for shaving. That’s 
all. In the locker below you are rugs and 
blankets; you will need them presently. They 
say it gets cold. I don’t know. Never been up 
before. Except a little work with gliders — 
which is mostly going down. Three-quarters 
of the chaps in the fleet haven’t. Here’s a 
folding-chair and table behind the door. Com- 
pact, eh?” 

He took the chair and balanced it on his lit- 
tle finger. “Pretty light, eh? Aluminium and 
magnesium alloy and a vacuum inside. All 
these cushions stuffed with hydrogen. Foxy! 
The whole ship’s like that. And not a man in 
the fleet, except the Prince and one or two others, 


120 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


over eleven stone. Couldn’t sweat the Prince, 
you know. We’ll go all over the thing to-mor- 
row. I’m frightfully keen on it.” 

He beamed at Bert. “You do look young,” 
he remarked. “I always thought you’d be an 
old man with a beard — a sort of philosopher. 
I don’t know why one should expect clever people 
always to be old. I do.” 

Bert parried that compliment a little awk- 
wardly, and then the lieutenant was struck with 
the riddle why Herr Butteridge had not come 
in his own flying machine. 

“It’s a long story,” said Bert. “Look here!” 
he said abruptly, “I wish you’d lend me a pair of 
slippers, or something. I’m regular sick of these 
sandals. They’re rotten things. I’ve been try- 
ing them for a friend.” 

“Right 0!” 

The ex-Rhodes scholar whisked out of the 
room and reappeared with a considerable choice 
of footwear, — pumps, cloth bath-slippers, and a 
purple pair adorned with golden sun-flowers. 

But these he repented of at the last moment. 
“I don’t even wear them myself,” he said. “Only 
brought ’em in the zeal of the moment.” He 
laughed confidentially. “Had ’em worked for 
me — in Oxford. By a friend. Take ’em every- 
where.” 

So Bert chose the pumps. 

The lieutenant broke into a cheerful snigger. 
“Here we are trying on slippers,” he said, “and 
the world going by like a panorama below. 
Rather a lark, eh? Look!” 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


121 


Bert peeped with him out of the window, look- 
ing from the bright pettiness of the red-and-silver 
cabin into a dark immensity. The land below, 
except for a lake, was black and featureless, 
and the other airships were hidden. “See more 
outside,” said the lieutenant. “Let’s go! 
There’s a sort of little gallery.” 

He led the way into the long passage, which was 
lit by one small electric light, past some notices 
in German, to an open balcony and a light ladder 
and gallery of metal lattice overhanging empty 
space. Bert followed his leader down to the 
gallery slowly and cautiously. From it he was 
able to watch the wonderful spectacle of the first 
air-fleet flying through the night. They flew 
in a wedge-shaped formation, the Vaterland 
highest and leading, the tail receding into the 
corners of the sky. They flew in long, regular 
undulations, great dark fish-like shapes, showing 
hardly any light at all, the engines making a 
throb-throb-throbbing sound that was very au- 
dible out on the gallery. They were going at a 
level of five or six thousand feet, and rising 
steadily. Below, the country lay silent, a clear 
darkness dotted and lined out with clusters of 
furnaces, and the lit streets of a group of big 
towns. The world seemed to lie in a bowl; the 
overhanging bulk of the airship above hid all 
but the lowest levels of the sky. 

They watched the landscape for a space. 

“Jolly it must be to invent things,” said the 
lieutenant suddenly. “How did you come to 
think of your machine first?” 


122 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


“ Worked it out,” said Bert, after a pause. 
“Jest ground away at it.” 

“Our people are frightfully keen on you. 
They thought the British had got you. Weren't 
the British keen?” 

“In a way,” said Bert. “Still — it's a long 
story.” 

“I think it's an immense thing — to invent. 
I couldn't invent a thing to save my life.” 

They both fell silent, watching the darkened 
world and following their thoughts until a bugle 
summoned them to a belated dinner. Bert 
was suddenly alarmed. “Don’t you 'ave to 
dress and things?” he said. “I've always been 
too hard at Science and things to go into Society 
and all that.” 

“No fear,” said Kurt. “Nobody's got more 
than the clothes they wear. We're travelling 
light. You might perhaps take your overcoat 
off. They've an electric radiator each end of 
the room.” 

And so presently Bert found himself sitting 
to eat in the presence of the “German Alexander” 
— that great and puissant Prince, Prince Karl 
Albert, the War Lord, the hero of two hemi- 
spheres. He was a handsome, blond man, with 
deep-set eyes, a snub nose, upturned moustache, 
and long white hands, a strange-looking man. 
He sat higher than the others, under a black 
eagle with widespread wings and the German 
Imperial flags; he was, as it were, enthroned, 
and it struck Bert greatly that as he ate he did 
not look at people, but over their heads like one 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


123 


who sees visions. Twenty officers of various 
ranks stood about the table — and Bert. They 
all seemed extremely curious to see the famous 
Butteridge, and their astonishment at his ap- 
pearance was ill-controlled. The Prince gave 
him a dignified salutation, to which, by an in- 
spiration, he bowed. Standing next the Prince 
was a brown-faced, wrinkled man with silver 
spectacles and fluffy, dingy-grey side-whiskers, 
who regarded Bert with a peculiar and discon- 
certing attention. The company sat after cere- 
monies Bert could not understand. At the 
other end of the table was the bird-faced officer 
Bert had dispossessed, still looking hostile and 
whispering about Bert to his neighbour. Two 
soldiers waited. The dinner was a plain one — 
a soup, some fresh mutton, and cheese — and 
there was very little talk. 

A curious solemnity indeed brooded over 
every one. Partly this was reaction after the 
intense toil and restrained excitement of start- 
ing; partly it was the overwhelming sense of 
strange new experiences, of portentous adven- 
ture. The Prince was lost in thought. He 
roused himself to drink to the Emperor in cham- 
pagne, and the company cried “Hoch!” like 
men repeating responses in church. 

No smoking was permitted, but some of the 
officers went down to the little open gallery to 
chew tobacco. No lights whatever were safe 
amidst that bundle of inflammable things. Bert 
suddenly fell yawning and shivering. He was 
overwhelmed by a sense of his own insignificance 


124 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


amidst these great rushing monsters of the air. 
He felt life was too big for him — too much 
for him altogether. 

He said something to Kurt about his head, 
went up the steep ladder from the swaying little 
gallery into the airship again, and so, as if it 
were a refuge, to bed. 

§ 5 

Bert slept for a time, and then his sleep was 
broken by dreams. Mostly he was fleeing from 
formless terrors down an interminable passage 
in an airship — a passage paved at first with 
ravenous trap-doors, and then with openwork 
canvas of the most careless description. 

“Gaw!” said Bert, turning over after his 
seventh fall through infinite space that night. 

He sat up in the darkness and nursed his 
knees. The progress of the airship was not nearly 
so smooth as a balloon; he could feel a regular 
swaying up, up, up and then down, down, down, 
and the throbbing and tremulous quiver of the 
engines. 

His mind began to teem with memories — 
more memories and more. 

Through them, like a struggling swimmer in 
broken water, came the perplexing question, 
what am I to do to-morrow? To-morrow, Kurt 
had told him, the Prince’s secretary, the Graf 
Von Winterfeld, would come to him and discuss 
his flying-machine, and then he would see the 
Prince. He would have to stick it out now that 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


125 


he was Butteridge, and sell his invention. And 
then, if they found him out ! He had a vision 
of infuriated Butteridges. . . . Suppose after all 
he owned up? Pretended it was their misun- 
derstanding? He began to scheme devices for 
selling the secret and circumventing Butteridge. 

What should he ask for the thing? Some- 
how twenty thousand pounds struck him as 
about the sum indicated. 

He fell into that despondency that lies in wait 
in the small hours. He had got too big a job 
on — too big a job. . . . 

Memories swamped his scheming. 

“ Where was I this time last night?” 

He recapitulated his evenings tediously and 
lengthily. Last night he had been up above 
the clouds in Butteridge’s balloon. He thought 
of the moment when he dropped through them 
and saw the cold twilight sea close below. He 
still remembered that disagreeable incident with 
a nightmare vividness. And the night before 
he and Grubb had been looking for cheap lodg- 
ings at Littlestone in Kent. How remote that 
seemed now. It might be years ago. For the 
first time he thought of his fellow Desert Dervish, 
left with the two red-painted bicycles on Dym- 
church sands. “’E won’t make much of a show 
of it, not without me. Any’ow ’e did ’ave the 
treasury — such as it was — in his pocket!” 

. . . The night before that was Bank Holiday 
night, and they had sat discussing their minstrel 
enterprise, drawing up a programme and re- 
hearsing steps. And the night before was Whit 


126 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


Sunday. “Lord!” cried Bert, “what a doing 
that motor-bicycle give me!” He recalled the 
empty flapping of the eviscerated cushion, the 
feeling of impotence as the flames rose again. 
From among the confused memories of that 
tragic flare one little figure emerged very bright 
and poignantly sweet, Edna, crying back reluc- 
tantly from the departing motor-car, “See you 
to-morrer, Bert?” 

Other memories of Edna clustered round that 
impression. They led Bert’s mind step by step 
to an agreeable state that found expression in, 
“I’ll marry ’er if she don’t look out.” And then 
in a flash it followed in his mind that if he sold 
the Butteridge secret he could ! Suppose after 
all he did get twenty thousand pounds; such 
sums have been paid ! With that he could buy 
house and garden, buy new clothes beyond 
dreaming, buy a motor, travel, have every de- 
light of the civilised life as he knew it, for him- 
self and Edna. Of course, risks were involved. 
“I’ll ’ave old Butteridge on my track, I expect !” 

He meditated upon that. He declined again, 
to despondency. As yet he was only in the 
beginning of the adventure. He had still to 
deliver the goods and draw the cash. And before 

that Just now he was by no means on his 

way home. He was flying off to America to 
fight there. “Not much fighting,” he con- 
sidered; “all our own way.” Still, if a shell did 
happen to hit the V aterland on the underside ! . . . 

“S’pose I ought to make my will.” 

He lay back for some time composing wills — 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


127 


chiefly in favour of Edna. He had settled now 
it was to be twenty thousand pounds. He left a 
number of minor legacies. The wills became 
more and more meandering and extravagant. . . . 

He woke from the eighth repetition of his 
nightmare fall through space. “This flying gets 
on one's nerves/' he said. 

He could feel the airship diving down, down, 
down, then slowly swinging to up, up, up. 
Throb, throb, throb, throb, quivered the engine. 

He got up presently and wrapped himself 
about with Mr. Butteridge's overcoat and all 
the blankets, for the air was very keen. Then 
he peeped out of the window to see a grey dawn 
breaking over clouds, then turned up his light 
and bolted his door, sat down to the table, and 
produced his chest-protector. 

He smoothed the crumpled plans with his 
hand, and contemplated them. Then he referred 
to the other drawings in the portfolio. Twenty 
thousand pounds. If he worked it right ! It 
was worth trying, anyhow. 

Presently he opened the drawer in which Kurt 
had put paper and writing-materials. 

Bert Smallways was by no means a stupid 
person, and up to a certain limit he had not 
been badly educated. His board school had 
taught him to draw up to certain limits, taught 
him to calculate and understand a specification. 
If at that point his country had tired of its 
efforts, and handed him over unfinished to 
scramble for a living in an atmosphere of ad- 
vertisements and individual enterprise, that was 


128 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


really not his fault. He was as his State had 
made him, and the reader must not imagine 
because he was a little Cockney cad, that he 
was absolutely incapable of grasping the idea of 
the Butteridge flying-machine. But he found it 
stiff and perplexing. His motor-bicycle and 
Grubb’s experiments and the “mechanical draw- 
ing” he had done in standard seven all helped 
him out ; and, moreover, the maker of these 
drawings, whoever he was, had been anxious to 
make his intentions plain. Bert copied sketches, 
he made notes, he made a quite tolerable and 
intelligent copy of the essential drawings and 
sketches of the others. Then he fell into a 
meditation upon them. 

At last he rose with a sigh, folded up the 
originals that had formerly been in his chest- 
protector and put them into the breast-pocket 
of his jacket, and then very carefully deposited the 
copies he had made in the place of the originals. 
He had no very clear plan in his mind in doing 
this, except that he hated the idea of altogether 
parting with the secret. For a long time he med- 
itated profoundly — nodding. Then he turned 
out his light and went to bed again and schemed 
himself to sleep. 

§ 6 

The hochgeboren Graf von Winterfeld was 
also a light sleeper that night, but then he was 
one of those people who sleep little and play chess 
problems in their heads to while away the time 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


129 


— and that night he had a particularly difficult 
problem to solve. 

He came in upon Bert while he was still in 
bed in the glow of the sunlight reflected from 
the North Sea below, consuming the rolls and 
coffee a soldier had brought him. He had a 
portfolio under his arm, and in the clear, early 
morning light his dingy grey hair and heavy, 
silver-rimmed spectacles made him look almost 
benevolent. He spoke English fluently, but 
with a strong German flavour. He was particu- 
larly bad with his “b’s,” and his “th's” softened 
towards weak “z’ds.” He called Bert explo- 
sively, “Pooterage.” He began with some in- 
distinct civilities, bowed, took a folding-table 
and chair from behind the door, put the former 
between himself and Bert, sat down on the 
latter, coughed drily, and opened his portfolio. 
Then he put his elbows on the table, pinched his 
lower lip with his two fore-fingers, and regarded 
Bert disconcertingly with magnified eyes. “You 
came to us, Herr Pooterage, against your will, ,, 
he said at last. 

“’Ow d’you make that out?” asked Bert, 
after a pause of astonishment. 

“I chuge by ze maps in your car. They were 
all English. And your provisions. They were 
all picnic. Also your cords were entangled. 
You haf been tugging — but no good. You 
could not manage ze balloon, and anuzzer power 
than yours prought you to us. Is it not so?” 

Bert thought. 

“Also — where is ze laty ?” 

K 


130 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


“ ’Ere ! — what lady ? ” 

“You started with a laty. That is evident. 
You shtarted for an afternoon excursion — a 
picnic. A man of your temperament — he would 
take a laty. She was not wiz you in your balloon 
when you came down at Dornhof. No ! Only 
her chacket ! It is your affair. Still, I am curi- 
ous.” 

Bert reflected. “’Ow d’you know that?” 

“I chuge by ze nature of your farious pro- 
visions. I cannot account, Mr. Pooterage, for 
ze laty, what you haf done with her. Nor can 
I tell why you should wear nature-sandals, nor 
why you should wear such cheap plue clothes. 
These are outside my instructions. Trifles, per- 
haps. Officially they are to be ignored. Laties 
come and go — I am a man of ze worldt. I haf 
known wise men wear sandals and efen practice 
vegetarian habits. I haf known men — or at 
any rate I haf known chemists — who did not 
schmoke. You haf, no doubt, put ze laty down 
somewhere. Well. Let us get to business. A 
higher power” — his voice changed its emotional 
quality, his magnified eyes seemed to dilate — 
“has prought you and your secret straight to us. 
So!” — he bowed his head — “so pe it. It is 
ze Destiny of Chermany and my Prince. I 
can undershtandt you always carry zat secret. 
You are afraidt of roppers and spies. So it 
comes wiz you — to us. Mr. Pooterage, Cher- 
many will puy it.” 

“Will she?” 

“She will,” said the .secretary, looking hard 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


131 


at Bert’s abandoned sandals in the corner of the 
locker. He roused himself, consulted a paper 
of notes for a moment, and Bert eyed his brown 
and wrinkled face with expectation and terror. 
“Chermany, I am instructed to say,” said the 
secretary, with his eyes on the table and his notes 
spread out, “has always been willing to puy your 
secret. We haf indeed peen eager to acquire it 
— fery eager ; and it was only ze fear that you 
might be, on patriotic groundts, acting in collu- 
sion with your Pritish War Office zat has made 
us discreet in offering for your marvellous in- 
vention through intermediaries. We haf no 
hesitation whatefer now, I am instructed, in 
agreeing to your proposal of a hundert tousand 
poundts.” 

“Crikey!” said Bert, overwhelmed. 

“I peg your pardon?” 

“Jest a twinge,” said Bert, raising his hand to 
his bandaged head. 

“Ah ! Also I am instructed to say that as for 
that noble, unrightly accused laty you haf champi- 
oned so brafely against Pritish hypocrisy and cold- 
ness, all ze chivalry of Chermany is on her site.” 

“Lady?” said Bert faintly, and then recalled 
the great Butteridge love story. Had the old 
chap also read the letters? He must think him 
a scorcher if he had. “Oh! that’s aw-right,” 
he said, “about ’er. I ’adn’t any doubts about 
that. I ” 

He stopped. The secretary certainly had a 
most appalling stare. It seemed ages before he 
looked down again. “Well, ze laty as you please. 


132 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


She is your affair. I haf performt my instruc- 
tions. And ze title of Paron, zat also can pe 
done. It can all pe done, Herr Pooterage.” 
He drummed on the table for a second or so, 
and resumed. “I haf to tell you, sir, zat you 
come to us at a crisis in — Welt-Politik. There 
can be no harm now for me to put our plans be- 
fore you. Pefore you leafe this ship again they 
will be manifest to all ze worldt. War is per- 
haps already declared. We go to America. 
Our fleet will descend out of ze air upon ze United 
States — it is a country quite unprepared for 
war eferywhere — eferywhere. Zey have always 
relied on ze Atlantic. And their navy. We have 
selected a certain point — it is at present ze 
secret of our commanders — which we shall 
seize, and zen we shall establish a depot — a 
sort of inland Gibraltar. It will be — what will 
it be ? — an eagle’s nest. Zere our airships will 
gazzer and repair, and thence they will fly to and 
fro ofer ze United States, terrorising cities, dom- 
inating Washington, levying what is necessary, 
until ze terms we dictate are accepted. You 
follow me?” 

“Go on !” said Bert. 

“We could haf done all zis wiz such Luftschiffe 
and Drachenflieger as we possess, but ze accession 
of your machine renders our project complete. 
It not only gifs us a better Drachenflieger , but it 
jemofes our last uneasiness as to Great Pritain. 
Wizout you, sir, Great Pritain, ze land you lofed 
so well and zat has requited you so ill, zat land of 
Pharisees and reptiles, can do nozzing ! — noz- 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


133 


zing! You see, I am perfectly frank wiz you. 
Well, I am instructed that Chermany recognises 
all this. We want you to place yourself at our 
disposal. We want you to become our Chief 
Head Flight Engineer. We want you to manu- 
facture, we want to equip a swarm of hornets 
under your direction. We want you to direct 
this force. And it is at our depot in America 
we want you. So we offer you simply, and with- 
out haggling, ze full terms you demanded weeks 
ago — one hundert tousand poundts in cash, 
a salary of three tousand poundts a year, a pen- 
sion of one tousand poundts a year, and ze title 
of Paron as you desired. These are my instruc- 
tions. v 

He resumed his scrutiny of Bert’s face. 

“That’s all right, of course,” said Bert, a little 
short of breath, but otherwise resolute and calm ; 
and it seemed to him that now was the time to 
bring his nocturnal scheming to the issue. 

The secretary contemplated Bert’s collar with 
sustained attention. Only for one moment did 
his gaze move to the sandals and back. 

“Jes’ lemme think a bit,” said Bert, finding 
the stare debilitating. “Look ’ere!” he said at 
last, with an air of great explicitness, “I got the 
secret.” 

“Yes.” 

“But I don’t want the name of Butteridge 
to appear — see? I been thinking that over.” 

“A little delicacy?” 

“Exactly. You buy the secret — leastways, 
I give it you — from Bearer — see?” 


134 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


His voice failed him a little, and the stare 
continued. “I want to do the thing Enony- 
mously. See?” 

Still staring. Bert drifted on like a swimmer 
caught by a current. “Fact is, I’m going to 
edop’ the name of Smallways. I don’t want no 
title of Baron; I’ve altered my mind. And I 
want the money quiet-like. I want the hundred 
thousand pounds paid into benks — thirty thou- 
sand into the London and County Benk Branch 
at Bun Hill in Kent directly I ’and over the plans ; 
twenty thousand into the Benk of England ; 
’arf the rest into a good French bank, the other 
’arf the German National Bank, see? I want 
it put there, right away. I don’t want it put 
in the name of Butteridge. I want it put in 
the name of Albert Peter Smallways ; that’s 
the name I’m going to edop’. That’s condition 
one.” 

“Go on!” said the secretary. 

“The nex condition,” said Bert, “is that you 
don’t make any inquiries as to title. I mean 
what English gentlemen do when they sell or let 
you land. You don’t arst ’ow I got it. See? 
’Ere I am — I deliver you the goods ; that’s 
all right. Some people ’ave the cheek to say this 
isn’t my invention, see ? It is, you know — 
that’s all right; but I don’t want that gone into. 
I want a fair and square agreement saying that’s 
all right. See?” 

His “See?” faded into a profound silence. 

The secretary sighed at last, leant back in his 
chair and produced a tooth-pick, and used it to 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


135 


assist his meditation on Bert’s case. “What 
was that name?” he asked at last, putting away 
the tooth-pick; “I must write it down.” 

“Albert Peter Small ways,” said Bert, in a 
mild tone. 

The secretary wrote it down, after a little 
difficulty about the spelling because of the differ- 
ent names of the letters of the alphabet in the two 
languages. 

“And now, Mr. Schmallvays,” he said at last, 
leaning back and resuming the stare, “tell me: 
how did you ket hold of Mister Pooterage’s bal- 
loon?” 

§ 7 

When at last the Graf von Winterfeld left 
Bert Smallways, he left him in an extremely 
deflated condition, with all his little story told. 

He had, as people say, made a clean breast of 
it. He had been pursued into details. He had 
had to explain the blue suit, the sandals, the 
Desert Dervishes — everything. For a time 
scientific zeal consumed the secretary, and the 
question of the plans remained in suspense. He 
even went into speculation about the previous 
occupants of the balloon. “I suppose,” he said, 
“the laty was the laty. Bot that is not our 
affair. 

“It is fery curious and amusing, yes: but 
I am afraid the Prince may be annoyt. He 
acted wiz his usual decision — always he acts 
wiz wonterful decision. Like Napoleon. Di- 
rectly he was tolt of your descent into the camp 


136 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


at Dornhof, he said, ‘Pring him! — pring him! 
It is my schtar P His schtar of Destiny! You 
see? He will be dthwarted. He directed you 
to come as Herr Pooterage, and you haf not done 
so. You haf triet, of course; but it has peen a 
poor try. His chugments of men are fery just 
and right, and it is better for men to act up to 
them — gompletely. Especially now. Particu- 
larly now.:” 

He resumed that attitude of his, with his under- 
lip pinched between his forefingers. He spoke 
almost confidentially. “It will be awkward. 
I triet to suggest some doubt, but I was over- 
ruled. The Prince does not listen. He is im- 
patient in the high air. Perhaps he will think his 
schtar has been making a fool of him. Perhaps 
he will think / haf been making a fool of him.” 
He wrinkled his forehead, and drew in the corners 
of his mouth. 

“I got the plans,” said Bert. 

“Yes. There is that ! Yes. But you see 
the Prince was interested in Herr Pooterage be- 
cause of his romantic seit. Herr Pooterage was 
so much more — ah ! — in the picture. I am 
afraid you are not equal to controlling the flying 
machine department of our aerial park as he 
wished you to do. He hadt promised himself 
that. . . . 

“And der was also the prestige — the worldt 
prestige of Pooterage with us. . . . Well, we 
must see what we can do.” He held out his 
hand. “Gif me the plans.” 

A terrible chill ran through the being of Mr. 




THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


137 


Smallways. To this day he is not clear in his 
mind whether he wept or no, but certainly there 
was weeping in his voice. “’Ere, I say !” he pro- 
tested. “Ain’t I to ’ave — nothin’ for ’em?” 

The secretary regarded him with benevolent 
eyes. “You do not deserve anyzing!” he 
said. 

“I might ’ave tore ’em up.” 

“Zey are not yours !” 

“They weren’t Butteridge’s !” 

“No need to pay anyzing.” 

Bert’s being seemed to tighten towards desperate 
deeds. “Gaw!” he said, clutching his coat, 
“ain't there?” 

“Pe galm,” said the secretary. “Listen ! You 
shall haf five hundert poundts. You shall haf 
it on my promise. I will do that for you, and 
that is all I can do. Take it from me. Gif me 
the name of that bank. Write it down. So ! 
I tell you the Prince — is no choke. I do not 
think he approffed of your appearance last night. 
No ! I can’t answer for him. He wanted Pooter- 
age, and you haf spoilt it. The Prince — I do 
not understand quite, he is in a strange state. 
It is the excitement of the starting and this great 
soaring in the air. I cannot account for what he 
does. But if all goes well I will see to it — you 
shall haf five hundert poundts. Will that do? 
Then gif me the plans.” 

“Old beggar!” said Bert, as the door clicked. 
“Gaw ! — what an ole beggar ! — Sharp ! ” 

He sat down in the folding-chair, and whistled 
noiselessly for a time. 


138 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


“Nice old swindle for ’im if I tore ’em up! I 
could ’ave.” 

He rubbed the bridge of his nose thought- 
fully. “I gave the whole blessed show away. 
If Fd jes’ kep quiet about being Enonymous. . . . 
Gaw! . . . Too soon, Bert, my boy — too soon 
and too rushy. I'd like to kick my silly self. 

“I couldn’t ’ave kep’ it up. 

“After all, it ain’t so very bad,” he said. 

“After all, five ’undred pounds. ... It isn’t 
my secret, anyhow. It’s jes’ a pickup on the 
road. Five ’undred. 

“Wonder what the fare is from America back 
’ome?” 

§ 8 

And later in the day an extremely shattered 
and disorganised Bert Smallways stood in the 
presence of the Prince Karl Albert. 

The proceedings were in German. The Prince 
was in his own cabin, the end room of the airship, 
a charming apartment furnished in wicker-work 
with a long window across its entire breadth, 
looking forward. He was sitting at a folding- 
table of green baize, with Von Winterfeld and two 
officers sitting beside him, and littered before them 
was a number of American maps and Mr. Butter- 
idge’s letters and his portfolio and a number of 
loose papers. Bert was not asked to sit down, 
and remained standing throughout the interview. 
Von Winterfeld told his story, and every now and 
then the words Ballon and Pooterage struck on 
Bert’s ears. The Prince’s face remained stern 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


139 


and ominous, and the two officers watched it cau- 
tiously or glanced at Bert. There was something 
a little strange in their scrutiny of the Prince — 
a curiosity, an apprehension. Then presently he 
was struck by an idea, and they fell discussing 
the plans. The Prince asked Bert abruptly in 
English. “Did you ever see this thing go op?” 

Bert jumped. “Saw it from Bun Til, your 
Royal Highness.” 

Von Winterfeld made some explanation. 

“How fast did it go?” 

“Couldn't say, your Royal Highness. The 
papers, leastways the Daily Courier , said eighty 
miles an hour.” 

They talked German over that for a time. 

“Couldt it standt still? Op in the air? That 
is what I want to know.” 

“It could 'ovver, your Royal Highness, like a 
wasp,” said Bert. 

“Viel besser, nicht wahr f” said the Prince to 
Von Winterfeld, and then went on in German for 
a time. 

Presently they came to an end, and the two 
officers looked at Bert. One rang a bell, and the 
portfolio was handed to an attendant, who took 
it away. 

Then they reverted to the case of Bert, and it 
was evident the Prince was inclined to be hard 
with him. Von Winterfeld protested. Appar- 
ently theological considerations came in, for there 
were several mentions of “Gott!” Some conclu- 
sions emerged, and it was apparent that Von Win- 
terfeld was instructed to convey them to Bert. 


140 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


“Mr. Schmallvays, you haf obtained a footing 
in this airship,” he said, “by disgraceful and sys- 
tematic lying.” 

“’Ardly systematic,” said Bert. “I ” 

The Prince silenced him by a gesture. 

“And it is within the power of his Highness 
to dispose of you as a spy.” 

“’Ere! — I came to sell ” 

“Ssh !” said one of the officers. 

“However, in consideration of the happy 
chance that mate you the instrument unter Gott 
of this Pooterage flying-machine reaching his 
Highness’s hand, you haf been spared. Yes, — 
you were the pearer of goot tidings. You will be 
allowed to remain on this ship until it is conven- 
ient to dispose of you. Do you understandt ? ” 

“ We will bring him,” said the Prince, and added 
terribly with a terrible glare, “ als Ballast .” 

“You are to come with us,” said Winterfeld, 
“as — pallast. Do you understandt?” 

Bert opened his mouth to ask about the five 
hundred pounds, and then a saving gleam of wis- 
dom silenced him. He met Von Winterf eld’s eye, 
and it seemed to him the secretary nodded slightly. 
“Go !” said the Prince, with a sweep of the great 
arm and hand towards the door. Bert went out 
like a leaf before a gale. 

§ 9 

But in between the time when the Graf von 
Winterfeld had talked to him and this alarming 
conference with the Prince, Bert had explored the 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


141 


Vaterland from end to end. He had found it in- 
teresting in spite of grave preoccupations. Kurt, 
like the greater number of the men upon the Ger- 
man air-fleet, had known hardly anything of aero- 
nautics before his appointment to the new flag- 
ship. But he was extremely keen upon this 
wonderful new weapon Germany had assumed 
so suddenly and dramatically. He showed things 
to Bert with a boyish eagerness and appreciation. 
It was as if he showed them over again to himself, 
like a child showing a new toy. “Let’s go all 
over the ship,” he said with zest. He pointed 
out particularly the lightness of everything, the 
use of exhausted aluminium tubing, of springy 
cushions inflated with compressed hydrogen ; the 
partitions were hydrogen bags covered with light 
imitation leather, the very crockery was a light 
biscuit glazed in a vacuum, and weighed next to 
nothing. Where strength was needed there was 
the new Charlottenburg alloy, German steel as it 
was called, the toughest and most resistant metal 
in the world. 

There was no lack of space. Space did not mat- 
ter, so long as load did not grow. The habitable 
part of the ship was two hundred and fifty feet 
long, and the rooms in two tiers; above these one 
could go up into remarkable little white-metal 
turrets with big windows and airtight double 
doors that enabled one to inspect the vast cavity 
of the gas-chambers. This inside view impressed 
Bert very much. He had never realised before 
that an airship was not one simple continuous gas- 
bag containing nothing but gas. Now he saw far 


142 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


above him the backbone of the apparatus and its 
big ribs, “like the neural and hsemal canals,” 
said Kurt, who had dabbled in biology. 

“Rather!” said Bert appreciatively, though he 
had not the ghost of an idea what these phrases 
meant. 

Little electric lights could be switched on up 
there if anything went wrong in the night. There 
were even ladders across the space. “But you 
can’t go into the gas,” protested Bert. “You 
can’t breve it.” 

The lieutenant opened a cupboard door and dis- 
played a diver’s suit, only that it was made of 
oiled silk, and both its compressed-air knapsack 
and its helmet were of an alloy of aluminium 
and some light metal. “We can go all over the 
inside netting and stick up bullet holes or leaks,” 
he explained. “There’s netting inside and 
out. The whole outer-case is rope ladder, so to 
speak.” 

Aft of the habitable part of the airship was the 
magazine of explosives, coming near the middle 
of its length. They were all bombs of various 
types — mostly in glass — none of the German 
airships carried any guns at all except one small 
pom-pom (to use the old English nickname dating 
from the Boer war), which was forward in the 
gallery upon the shield at the heart of the eagle. 
From the magazine amidships a covered canvas 
gallery with aluminium treads on its floor and a 
hand-rope, ran back underneath the gas-chamber 
to the engine-room at the tail; but along this 
Bert did not go, and from first to last he never saw 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


143 


the engines. But he went up a ladder against a 
gale of ventilation — a ladder that was encased in 
a kind of gas-tight fire escape — and ran right 
athwart the great forward air-chamber to the little 
look-out gallery with a telephone, that gallery 
that bore the light pom-pom of German steel and 
its locker of shells. This gallery was all of alu- 
minium magnesium alloy, the tight front of the air- 
ship swelled cliff-like above and below, and the 
black eagle sprawled overwhelmingly gigantic, its 
extremities all hidden by the bulge of the gas-bag. 

And far down, under the soaring eagles, was 
England, four thousand feet below perhaps, and 
looking very small and defenceless indeed in the 
morning sunlight. 

The realisation that there was England gave 
Bert sudden and unexpected qualms of patriotic 
compunction. He was struck by a quite novel 
idea. After all, he might have torn up those plans 
and thrown them away. These people could not 
have done so very much to him. And even if 
they did, ought not an Englishman to die for his 
country? It was an idea that had hitherto been 
rather smothered up by the cares of a competitive 
civilisation. He became violently depressed. He 
ought, he perceived, to have seen it in that light 
before. Why hadn’t he seen it in that light 
before ? 

Indeed, wasn’t he a sort of traitor? .... 

He wondered how the aerial fleet must look 
from down there. Tremendous, no doubt, and 
dwarfing all the buildings. 

He was passing between Manchester and Liver- 


144 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


pool, Kurt told him ; a gleaming band across the 
prospect was the Ship Canal, and a weltering ditch 
of shipping far away ahead, the Mersey estuary. 
Bert was a southerner; he had never been north 
of the Midland counties, and the multitude of fac- 
tories and chimneys — the latter for the most 
part obsolete and smokeless now, superseded by 
huge electric generating stations that consumed 
their own reek — old railway viaducts, mono-rail 
net-works and goods yards, and the vast areas of 
dingy homes and narrow streets, spreading aim- 
lessly, struck him as though Camberwell and 
Rotherhithe had run to seed. Here and there, as 
if caught in a net, were fields and agricultural 
fragments. It was a sprawl of undistinguished 
population. There were, no doubt, museums 
and town halls and even cathedrals of a sort to 
mark theoretical centres of municipal and reli- 
gious organisation in this confusion; but Bert 
could not see them, they did not stand out at all 
in that wide disorderly vision of congested workers’ 
houses and places to work, and shops and meanly 
conceived chapels and churches. And across this 
landscape of an industrial civilisation swept the 
shadows of the German airships like a hurrying 
shoal of fishes. . . . 

Kurt and he fell talking of aerial tactics, and 
presently went down to the undergallery in order 
that Bert might see the Drachenflieger that the 
airships of the right wing had picked up overnight 
and were towing behind them ; each airship 
towing three or four. They looked like big box- 
kites of an exaggerated form, soaring at the ends 


THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET 


145 


of invisible cords. They had long, square heads 
and flattened tails, with lateral propellers. 

“Much skill is required for those! — much 
skill !” 

“Rather!” 

Pause. 

“Your machine is different from that, Mr. 
Butteridge?” <; 

“Quite different,” said Bert. “More like an in- 
sect, and less like a bird. And it buzzes, and 
don’t drive about so. What can those things 
do?” 

Kurt was not very clear upon that himself, 
and was still explaining when Bert was called 
to the conference we have recorded with the 
Prince. . . . 

And after that was over, the last traces of 
Butteridge fell from Bert like a garment, and he 
became Smallways to all on board. The soldiers 
ceased to salute him, and the officers ceased to 
seem aware of his existence, except Lieutenant 
Kurt. He was turned out of his nice cabin, and 
packed in with his belongings to share that of 
Lieutenant Kurt, whose luck it was to be junior, 
and the bird-headed officer, still swearing slightly 
and carrying strops and aluminium boot-trees 
and weightless hair-brushes and hand-mirrors and 
pomade in his hands, resumed possession. Bert 
was put in with Kurt because there was no- 
where else for him to lay his bandaged head in that 
close-packed vessel. He was to mess, he was told, 
with the men. 

Kurt came and stood with his legs wide apart, 


146 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


and surveyed him for a moment as he sat despond- 
ent in his new quarters. 

“ What’s your real name, then?” said Kurt, 
who was only imperfectly informed of the new 
state of affairs. 

“Smallways.” 

“I thought you were a bit of a fraud — even 
when I thought you were Butteridge. You’re 
jolly lucky the Prince took it calmly. He’s a 
pretty tidy blazer when he’s roused. He wouldn’t 
stick a moment at pitching a chap of your sort 
overboard if he thought fit. No ! . . . They’ve 
shoved you on to me, but it’s my cabin, you 
know.” 

“I won’t forget,” said Bert. 

Kurt left him, and when he came to look about 
him the first thing he saw pasted on the padded 
wall was a reproduction of the great picture 
by Siegfried Schmalz of the War God, that 
terrible, trampling figure with the viking helmet 
and the scarlet cloak, wading through destruc- 
tion, sword in hand, which had so strong a re- 
semblance to Karl Albert, the prince it was 
painted to please. 


CHAPTER V 


THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC 

§1 

The Prince Karl Albert had made a profound 
impression upon Bert. He was quite the most 
terrifying person Bert had ever encountered. 
He filled the Smallways soul with passionate 
dread and antipathy. For a long time Bert sat 
alone in Kurt’s cabin, doing nothing and not 
venturing even to open the door lest he should 
be by that much nearer that appalling presence. 

So it came about that he was probably the last 
person on board to hear the news that wireless 
telegraphy was bringing to the airship in throbs 
and fragments of a great naval battle in progress 
in mid-Atlantic. 

He learnt it at last from Kurt. 

Kurt came in with a general air of ignoring 
Bert, but muttering to himself in English never- 
theless. “ Stupendous !” Bert heard him say. 
“Here!” he said, “get off this locker.” And 
he proceeded to rout out two books and a case 
of maps. He spread them on the folding-table, 
and stood regarding them. For a time his 
Germanic discipline struggled with his English 
informality and his natural kindliness and talka- 
tiveness, and at last lost. 

“They’re at it, Smallways,” he said. 

147 


148 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


“At what, sir?” said Bert, broken and re- 
spectful. 

“Fighting! The American North Atlantic 
squadron and pretty nearly the whole of our 
fleet. Our Eiserne Kreuz has had a gruelling 
and is sinking, and their Miles Standish — she’s 
one of their biggest — has sunk with all hands. 
Torpedoes, I suppose. She was a bigger ship 
than the Karl der Grosse, but five or six years 
older. . . . Gods ! I wish we could see it, Small- 
ways; a square fight in blue water, guns or 
nothing, and all of ’em steaming ahead!” 

He spread his maps, he had to talk, and so he 
delivered a lecture on the naval situation to Bert. 

“Here it is,” he said, “latitude 30° 50' N. — - 
longitude 30° 50' W. It’s a good day off us, 
anyhow, and they’re all going south-west by 
south at full pelt as hard as they can go. We 
shan’t see a bit of it, worse luck! Not a sniff 
we shan’t get !” 

§ 2 

The naval situation in the North Atlantic 
at that time was a peculiar one. The United 
States was by far the stronger of the two powers 
upon the sea, but the bulk of the American fleet 
was still in the Pacific. It was in the direction 
of Asia that war had been most feared, for the 
situation between Asiatic and white had become 
unusually violent and dangerous, and the Japanese 
government had shown itself quite unprecedent- 
edly difficult. The German attack therefore 
found half the American strength at Manila, 


THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC 149 


and what was called the Second Fleet strung 
out across the Pacific in wireless contact be- 
tween the Asiatic station and San Francisco. 
The North Atlantic squadron was the sole Ameri- 
can force on her eastern shore; it was returning 
from a friendly visit to France and Spain, and 
was pumping oil-fuel from tenders in mid-At- 
lantic — for most of its ships were steamships 
— when the international situation became acute. 
It was made up of four battleships and five 
armoured cruisers ranking almost with battle- 
ships, not one of which was of a later date than 
1913. The Americans had indeed grown so 
accustomed to the idea that Great Britain could 
be trusted to keep the peace of the Atlantic that 
a naval attack on the eastern seaboard found 
them unprepared even in their imaginations. 
But long before the declaration of war — indeed, 
on Whit Monday — the whole German fleet of 
eighteen battleships, with a flotilla of fuel tenders 
and converted liners containing stores to be used 
in support of the air-fleet, had passed through 
the straits of Dover and headed boldly for New 
York. Not only did these German battleships 
outnumber the Americans two to one, but they 
were more heavily armed and more modern in 
construction — seven of them having high ex- 
plosive engines built of Charlottenburg steel, 
and all carrying Charlottenburg steel guns. 

The fleets came into contact on Wednesday 
before any actual declaration of war. The 
Americans had strung out in the modern fashion 
at distances of thirty miles or so, and were steam- 


150 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


ing to keep themselves between the Germans and 
either the eastern states or Panama; because, 
vital as it was to defend the seaboard cities and 
particularly New York, it was still more vital to 
save the canal from any attack that might pre- 
vent the return of the main fleet from the Pacific. 
No doubt, said Kurt, this was now making records 
across that ocean, “ unless the Japanese have had 
the same idea as the Germans.” It was obviously 
beyond human possibility that the American 
North Atlantic fleet could hope to meet and 
defeat the German ; but, on the other hand, with 
luck it might fight a delaying action and inflict 
such damage as to greatly weaken the attack upon 
the coast defences. Its duty, indeed, was not 
victory but devotion, the severest task in the 
world. Meanwhile the submarine defences of 
New York, Panama, and the other more vital 
points could be put in some sort of order. 

This was the naval situation, and until Wednes- 
day in Whit week it was the only situation the 
American people had realised. It was then they 
heard for the first time of the real scale of the 
Dornhof aeronautic park, and the possibility 
of an attack coming upon them not only by sea, 
but by the air. But it is curious that so dis- 
credited were the newspapers of that period that 
a large majority of New Yorkers, for example, 
did not believe the most copious and circum- 
stantial accounts of the German air-fleet until 
it was actually in sight of New York. 

Kurt’s talk was half soliloquy. He stood 
with a map on Mercator’s projection before him, 


THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC 151 


swaying to the swinging of the ship and talking 
of guns and tonnage, of ships and their build 
and powers and speed, of strategic points and 
bases of operation. A certain shyness that re- 
duced him to the status of a listener at the offi- 
cers’ table no longer silenced him. 

Bert stood by, saying very little, but watching 
Kurt’s finger on the map. “ They’ve been saying 
things like this in the papers for a long time,” 
he remarked. “Fancy it coming real!” 

Kurt had a detailed knowledge of the Miles 
Standish. “She used to be a crack ship for 
gunnery — held the record. I wonder if we beat 
her shooting, or how? I wish I was in it. I 
wonder which of our ships beat her. Maybe she 
got a shell in her engines. It’s a running fight ! 
I wonder what the Barbarossa is doing,” he went 
on. “She’s my old ship. Not a first-rater, but 
good stuff. I bet she’s got a shot or two home 
by now if old Schneider’s up to form. Just 
think of it ! There they are whacking away at 
each other, great guns going, shells exploding, 
magazines bursting, ironwork flying about like 
straw in a gale, all we’ve been dreaming of for 
years ! I suppose we shall fly right away to 
New York — just as though it wasn’t anything 
at all. I suppose we shall reckon we aren’t 
wanted down there. It’s no more than a cover- 
ing fight on our side. All those tenders and 
store-ships of ours are going on south-west by 
west to New York to make a floating depot for 
us. See?” He dabbed his forefinger on the 
map. “Here we are. Our train of stores goes 


152 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


there, our battleships elbow the Americans out of 
our way there.” . . . 

When Bert went down to the men’s mess- 
room to get his evening ration, hardly any one 
took notice of him except just to point him out 
for an instant. Every one was talking of the 
battle, suggesting, contradicting — at times, until 
the petty officers hushed them, it rose to a great 
uproar. There was a new bulletin, but what it 
said he did not gather except that it concerned 
the Barbarossa. Some of the men stared at him, 
and he heard the name of “Booteraidge” several 
times; but no one molested him, and there was 
no difficulty about his soup and bread when his 
turn at the end of the queue came. He had 
feared there might be no ration for him, and if 
so he did not know what he would have done. 

Afterwards he ventured out upon the little 
hanging gallery with the solitary sentinel. The 
weather was still fine, but the wind was rising 
and the rolling swing of the airship increasing. 
He clutched the rail tightly and felt rather giddy. 
They were now out of sight of land, and over 
blue water rising and falling in great masses. A 
dingy old brigantine under the British flag rose 
and plunged amid the broad blue waves — the 
only ship in sight. 


§ 3 

In the evening it began to blow and the air- 
ship to roll like a porpoise as it swung through 
the air. Kurt said that several of the men were 


THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC 153 


sea-sick, but the motion did not inconvenience 
Bert, whose luck it was to be of that mysterious 
gastric disposition which constitutes a good 
sailor. He slept well, but in the small hours the 
light awoke him, and he found Kurt staggering 
about in search of something. He found it at 
last in the locker, and held it in his hand un- 
steadily — a compass. Then he compared his 
map. 

“We've changed our direction," he said, “and 
come into the wind. I can't make it out. We've 
turned away from New York to the south. Al- 
most as if we were going to take a hand " 

He continued talking to himself for some 
time. 

Day came, wet and windy. The window was 
bedewed externally, and they could see nothing 
through it. It was also very cold, and Bert 
decided to keep rolled up in his blankets on the 
locker until the bugle summoned him to his 
morning ration. That consumed, he went out 
on the little gallery; but he could see nothing 
but eddying clouds driving headlong by, and the 
dim outlines of the nearer airships. Only at rare 
intervals could he get a glimpse of grey sea 
through the pouring cloud-drift. 

Later in the morning the V aterland changed 
altitude, and soared up suddenly in a high, clear 
sky, going, Kurt said, to a height of nearly 
thirteen thousand feet. 

Bert was in his cabin, and chanced to see the 
dew vanish from the window and caught the 
gleam of sunlight outside. He looked out, and 


154 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


saw once more that sunlit cloud floor he had 
seen first from the balloon, and the ships of the 
German air-fleet rising one by one from the 
white, as fish might rise and become visible from 
deep water. He stared for a moment and then 
ran out to the little gallery to see this wonder 
better. Below was cloudland and storm, a great 
drift of tumbled weather going hard away to 
the north-east, and the air about him was clear 
and cold and serene save for the faintest chill 
breeze and a rare drifting snow-flake. Throb, 
throb, throb, throb, went the engines in the 
stillness. That huge herd of airships rising one 
after another had an effect of strange, portentous 
monsters breaking into an altogether unfamiliar 
world. . . . 

Either there was no news of the naval battle 
that morning, or the Prince kept to himself 
whatever came until past midday. Then the 
bulletins came with a rush, bulletins that made 
the lieutenant wild with excitement. 

“ Barbarossa disabled and sinking,” he cried. 
“Gott im Himmel ! Der alte Barbarossa ! Aber 
welch ein braver krieger!” 

He walked about the swinging cabin, and for a 
time he was wholly German. 

Then he became English again. “ Think of it, 
Smallways ! The old ship we kept so clean and 
tidy ! All smashed about, and the iron flying 
about in fragments, and the chaps one knew 
— Gott ! — flying about too ! Scalding water 
squirting, fire, and the smash, smash of the 
guns! They smash when you’re near! Like 


THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC 155 


everything bursting to pieces ! Wool won’t stop 
it — nothing ! And me up here — so near and 
so far! Der alte Barbarossa!” 

“Any other ships?” asked Small ways pres- 
ently. 

“Gott ! Yes ! We’ve lost the Karl der Grosse, 
our best and biggest. Run down in the night 
by a British liner that blundered into the fight- 
ing — in trying to blunder out. They’re fighting 
in a gale. The liner’s afloat with her nose broken, 
sagging about ! There never was such a battle ! 
— never before ! Good ships and good men on 
both sides — and a storm and the night and the 
dawn and all in the open ocean full steam ahead ! 
No stabbing ! No submarines ! Guns and shoot- 
ing! Half our ships we don’t hear of any more, 
because their masts are shot away. Latitude, 
30° 40' N. — longitude, 40° 30' W. — where’s 
that?” 

He routed out his map again, and stared at it 
with eyes that did not see. 

“Der alte Barbarossa ! I can’t get it out of my 
head — with shells in her engine-room, and the 
fires flying out of her furnaces, and the stokers 
and engineers scalded and dead. Men I’ve 
messed with, Smallways — men I’ve talked to 
close ! And they’ve had their day at last ! And 
it wasn’t all luck for them ! 

“Disabled and sinking! I suppose everybody 
can’t have all the luck in a battle. Poor old 
Schneider ! I bet he gave ’em something back !” 

So it was the news of the battle came filtering 
through to them all that morning. The Americans 


156 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


had lost a second ship, name unknown; the 
Hermann had been damaged in covering the Bar - 
barossa. . . . Kurt fretted like an imprisoned 
animal about the airship, now going up to the for- 
ward gallery under the eagle, now down into the 
swinging gallery, now poring over his maps. He 
infected Smallways with a sense of the immediacy 
of this battle that was going on just over the curve 
of the earth. But when Bert went down to the 
gallery the world was empty and still, a clear inky- 
blue sky above and a rippled veil of still, thin 
sunlit cirrus below, through which one saw a rac- 
ing drift of rain-cloud, and never a glimpse of sea. 
Throb, throb, throb, throb, went the engines, and 
the long, undulating wedge of airships hurried 
after the flagship like a flight of swans after their 
leader. Save for the quiver of the engines it was 
as noiseless as a dream. And down there, some- 
where in the wind and rain, guns roared, shells 
crashed home, and, after the old manner of warfare, 
men toiled and died. 

§ 4 

As the afternoon wore on the lower weather 
abated, and the sea became intermittently visible 
again. The air-fleet dropped slowly to the mid- 
dle air, and towards sunset they had a glimpse 
of the disabled Barbarossa far away to the east. 
Smallways heard men hurrying along the passage, 
and was drawn out to the gallery, where he found 
nearly a dozen officers collected and scrutinising 
the helpless ruins of the battleship through field- 
glasses. Two other vessels stood by her, one an 


THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC 157 

exhausted petrol tank, very high out of the water, 
and the other a converted liner. Kurt was at the 
end of the gallery, a little apart from the others. 

“Gott !” he said at last, lowering his binocular, 
“it is like seeing an old friend with his nose cut 
off — waiting to be finished. Der Barbarossa!” 

With a sudden impulse he handed his glass to 
Bert, who had peered beneath his hands, ignored 
by every one, seeing the three ships merely as 
three brown-black lines upon the sea. 

Never had Bert seen the like of that magnified 
slightly hazy image before. It was not simply 
a battered ironclad that wallowed helpless, it 
was a mangled ironclad. It seemed wonderful 
she still floated. Her powerful engines had been 
her ruin. In the long chase of the night she had 
got out of line with her consorts, and nipped in 
between the Susquehanna and the Kansas City. 
They discovered her proximity, dropped back 
until she was nearly broadside on to the former 
battleship, and signalled up the Theodore Roose- 
velt and the little Monitor. As dawn broke she 
had found herself hostess of a circle. The fight 
had not lasted five minutes before the appearance 
of the Hermann to the east, and immediately 
after of the Filrst Bismarck in the west, forced the 
Americans to leave her, but in that time they had 
smashed her iron to rags. They had vented the 
accumulated tensions of their hard day’s retreat 
upon her. As Bert saw her, she seemed a mere 
metal-worker’s fantasy of frozen metal writhings. 
He could not tell part from part of her, except by 
its position. 


158 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


“Gott!” murmured Kurt, taking the glasses 
Bert restored to him — “Gott! Da waren Al- 
brecht — der gute Albrecht und der alte Zim- 
mermann — und von Rosen !” 

Long after the Barbarossa had been swallowed 
up in the twilight and distance he remained on the 
gallery peering through his glasses, and when he 
came back to his cabin he was unusually silent and 
thoughtful. 

“This is a rough game, Small ways,” he said at 
last — “this war is a rough game. Somehow 
one sees it different after a thing like that. Many 
men there were worked to make that Barbarossa , 
^nd there were men in it — one does not meet the 
like of them every day. Albrecht — there was 
a man named Albrecht — played the zither and 
improvised; I keep on wondering what has hap- 
pened to him. He and I — we were very close 
friends, after the German fashion.” 

§ 5 

Smallways woke the next night to discover the 
cabin in darkness, a draught blowing through it, 
and Kurt talking to himself in German. He could 
see him dimly by the window, which he had un- 
screwed and opened, peering down. That cold, 
clear, attenuated light which is not so much light 
as a going of darkness, which casts inky shadows 
and so often heralds the dawn in the high air, 
was on his face. 

“What’s the row?” said Bert. 

“Shut up!” said the lieutenant. “Can’t you 
hear?” 


THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC 159 


Into the stillness came the repeated heavy thud 
of guns, one, two, a pause, then three in quick 
succession. 

“Gaw!” said Bert — “guns!” and was in- 
stantly at the lieutenant’s side. The airship was 
still very high and the sea below was masked 
by a thin veil of clouds. The wind had fallen, and 
Bert, following Kurt’s pointing finger, saw dimly 
through the colourless veil first a red glow, then 
a quick red flash, and then at a little distance from 
it another. They were, it seemed for a while, 
silent flashes, and seconds after, when one had 
ceased to expect them, came the belated thuds — 
thud, thud. Kurt spoke in German, very quickly. 

A bugle call rang through the airship. 

Kurt sprang to his feet, saying something 
in an excited tone, still using German, and went 
to the door. 

“I say! What’s up?” cried Bert. “What’s 
that?” 

The lieutenant stopped for an instant in the 
doorway, dark against the light passage. “You 
stay where you are, Smallways. You keep 
there and do nothing. We’re going into action,” 
he explained, and vanished. 

Bert’s heart began to beat rapidly. He felt 
himself poised over the fighting vessels far below. 
In a moment, were they to drop like a hawk 
striking a bird? “Gaw!” he whispered at last, 
in awestricken tones. 

Thud ! . . . thud ! He discovered far away 
a second ruddy flare flashing guns back at the 
first. He perceived some difference on the 


160 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


V aterland for which he could not account, and 
then he realised that the engines had slowed 
to an almost inaudible beat. He stuck his head 
out of the window — it was a tight fit — and 
saw in the bleak air the other airships slowed down 
to a scarcely perceptible motion. 

A second bugle sounded, was taken up faintly 
from ship to ship. Out went the lights; the 
fleet became dim, dark bulks against an intense 
blue sky that still retained an occasional star. 
For a long time they hung, for an interminable 
time it seemed to him, and then began the sound 
of air being pumped into the balloonette, and 
slowly, slowly the V aterland sank down towards 
the clouds. 

He craned his neck, but he could not see if 
the rest of the fleet was following them ; the over- 
hang of the gas-chambers intervened. There 
was something that stirred his imagination deeply 
in that stealthy, noiseless descent. 

The obscurity deepened for a time, the last 
fading star on the horizon vanished, and he felt 
the cold presence of cloud. Then suddenly the 
glow beneath assumed distinct outlines, became 
flames, and the V aterland ceased to descend and 
hung observant, and it would seem unobserved, 
just beneath a drifting stratum of cloud, a thou- 
sand feet, perhaps, over the battle below. 

In the night the struggling naval battle and 
retreat had entered upon a new phase. The 
Americans had drawn together the ends of the 
flying line skilfully and dexterously, until at last 
it was a column and well to the south of the lax 


THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC 161 


sweeping pursuit of the Germans. Then in the 
darkness before the dawn they had come about 
and steamed northward in close order with the 
idea of passing through the German battle-line 
and falling upon the flotilla that was making for 
New York in support of the German air-fleet. 
Much had altered since the first contact of the 
fleets. By this time the American admiral, 
O’Connor, was fully informed of the existence of 
the airships, and he was no longer vitally con- 
cerned for Panama, since the submarine flotilla 
was reported arrived there from Key West, and 
the Delaware and Abraham Lincoln , two powerful 
and entirely modern ships, were already at Rio 
Grande, on the Pacific side of the canal. His 
manoeuvre was, however, delayed by a boiler ex- 
plosion on board the Susquehanna , and dawn 
found this ship in sight of and indeed so close to 
the Bremen and Weimar that they instantly en- 
gaged. There was no alternative to her abandon- 
ment but a fleet engagement. O’Connor chose 
the latter course. It was by no means a hope- 
less fight. The Germans, though much more 
numerous and powerful than the Americans, were 
in a dispersed line measuring nearly forty-five 
miles from end to end, and there were many 
chances that before they could gather in for the 
fight the column of seven Americans would have 
ripped them from end to end. 

The day broke dim and overcast, and neither 
the Bremen nor the Weimar realised they had to 
deal with more than the Susquehanna until the 
whole column drew out from behind her at a 

M 


162 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


distance of a mile or less and bore down on them. 
This was the position of affairs when the Vater- 
land appeared in the sky. The red glow Bert 
had seen through the column of clouds came from 
the luckless Susquehanna; she lay almost im- 
mediately below, burning fore and aft, but still 
fighting two of her guns and steaming slowly 
southward. The Bremen and the Weimar, both 
hit in several places, were going west by south 
and away from her. The American fleet, headed 
by the Theodore Roosevelt, was crossing behind 
them, pounding them in succession, steaming in 
between them and the big modern Fiirst Bis- 
marck, which was coming up from the west. To 
Bert, however, the names of all these ships were 
unknown, and for a considerable time indeed, 
misled by the direction in which the combatants 
were moving, he imagined the Germans to be 
Americans and the Americans Germans. He saw 
what appeared to him to be a column of six bat- 
tleships pursuing three others, who were supported % 
by a newcomer, until the fact that the Bremen and 
Weimar were firing into the Susquehanna upset 
his calculations. Then for a time he was hope- 
lessly at a loss. The noise of the guns, too, con- 
fused him, they no longer seemed to boom ; they 
went whack, whack, whack, whack, and each 
faint flash made his heart jump in anticipation 
of the instant impact. He saw these ironclads, 
too, not in profile, as he was accustomed to see 
ironclads in pictures, but in plan and curiously 
foreshortened. For the most part they presented 
empty decks, but here and there little knots of 


THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC 163 


men sheltered behind steel bulwarks. The long, 
agitated noses of their big guns jetting thin 
transparent flashes and the broadside activity of 
the quick-firers, were the chief facts in this bird’s- 
eye view. The Americans, being steam-turbine 
ships, had from two to four blast funnels each; 
the Germans lay lower in the water, having ex- 
plosive engines, which now for some reason made 
an unwonted muttering roar. Because of their 
steam propulsion, the American ships were larger 
and with a more graceful outline. He saw all 
these foreshortened ships rolling considerably 
and fighting their guns over a sea of huge low 
waves and under the cold, explicit light of dawn. 
The whole spectacle waved slowly with the long 
rhythmic rising and beat of the airship. 

At first only the V aterland of all the flying fleet 
appeared upon the scene below. She hovered 
high over the Theodore Roosevelt , keeping pace 
with the full speed of that ship. From that ship 
she must have been intermittently visible through 
the drifting clouds. The rest of the German fleet 
remained above the cloud canopy at a height of 
six or seven thousand feet, communicating with 
the flagship by wireless telegraphy, but risking 
no exposure to the artillery below. 

It is doubtful at what particular time the un- 
lucky Americans realised the presence of this new 
factor in the fight. No account now survives of 
their experience. We have to imagine as well as 
we can what it must have been to a battled-strained 
sailor suddenly glancing upward to discover that 
huge long silent shape overhead, vaster than any 


164 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


battleship, and trailing now from its hinder quarter 
a big German flag. Presently, as the sky cleared, 
more of such ships appeared in the blue through 
the dissolving clouds, and more, all disdainfully 
free of guns or armour, all flying fast to keep pace 
with the running fight below. 

From first to last no gun whatever was fired at 
the Vaterland, and only a few rifle shots. It was 
a mere adverse stroke of chance that she had a 
man killed aboard her. Nor did she take any 
direct share in the fight until the end. She flew 
above the doomed American fleet while the Prince 
by wireless telegraphy directed the movements 
of her consorts. Meanwhile the V og el- stern and 
Preussen, each with half a dozen drachenflieger 
in tow, went full speed ahead and then dropped 
through the clouds, perhaps five miles ahead of 
the Americans. The Theodore Roosevelt let fly at 
once with the big guns in her forward barbette, 
but the shells burst far below the V og el- stern, and 
forthwith a dozen single-man drachenflieger were 
swooping down to make their attack. 

Bert, craning his neck through the cabin port- 
hole, saw the whole of that incident, that first en- 
counter of aeroplane and ironclad. He saw the 
queer German drachenflieger, with their wide flat 
wings and square box-shaped heads, their wheeled 
bodies, and their single-man riders, soar down the 
air like a flight of birds. “Gaw \” he said. One 
to the right pitched extravagantly, shot steeply 
up into the air, burst with a loud report, and 
flamed down into the sea; another plunged nose 
forward into the water and seemed to fly to pieces 


THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC 165 


as it hit the waves. He saw little men on the 
deck of the Theodore Roosevelt below, men fore- 
shortened in plan into mere heads and feet, run- 
ning out preparing to shoot at the others. Then 
the foremost flying-machine was rushing between 
Bert and the American’s deck, and then bang ! 
came the thunder of its bomb flung neatly at the 
forward barbette, and a thin little crackling of 
rifle shots in reply. Whack, whack, whack, went 
the quick-firing guns of the Americans’ battery, 
and smash came an answering shell from the 
Fiirst Bismarck . Then a second and third flying- 
machine passed between Bert and the American 
ironclad, dropping bombs also, and a fourth, its 
rider hit by a bullet, reeled down and dashed 
itself to pieces and exploded between the shot- 
torn funnels, blowing them apart. Bert had a 
momentary glimpse of a little black creature 
jumping from the crumpling frame of the flying- 
machine, hitting the funnel, and falling limply, 
to be instantly caught and driven to nothingness 
by the blaze and rush of the explosion. 

Smash ! came a vast explosion in the forward 
part of the flagship, and a huge piece of metal- 
work seemed to lift out of her and dump itself 
into the sea, dropping men and leaving a gap into 
which a prompt drachenflieger planted a flaring 
bomb. And then for an instant Bert perceived 
only too clearly in the growing, pitiless light a 
number of minute, convulsively active animal- 
cula scorched and struggling in the Theodore 
Roosevelt's foaming wake. What were they? 
Not men — surely not men? Those drowning, 


166 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


mangled little creatures tore with their clutching 
fingers at Bert’s soul. “Oh, Gord!” he cried, 
“Oh, Gord!” almost whimpering. He looked 
again and they had gone, and the black stem of 
the Andrew Jackson , a little disfigured by the 
sinking Bremen’s la§t shot, was parting the water 
that had swallowed them into two neatly sym- 
metrical waves. For some moments sheer blank 
horror blinded Bert to the destruction below. 

Then, with an immense rushing sound, bearing 
as it were a straggling volley of crashing minor 
explosions on its back, the Susquehanna , three 
miles and more now to the east, blew up and van- 
ished abruptly in a boiling, steaming welter. For 
a moment nothing was to be seen but tumbled 
water, and then there came belching up from 
below, with immense gulping noises, eructations 
of steam and air and petrol and fragments of 
canvas and woodwork and men. 

That made a distinct pause in the fight. It 
seemed a long pause to Bert. He found himself 
looking for the drachenflieger. The flattened 
ruin of one was floating abeam of the Monitor , 
the rest had passed, dropping bombs down the 
American column ; several were in the water and 
apparently uninjured, and three or four were still 
in the air and coming round now in a wide circle 
to return to their mother airships. The American 
ironclads were no longer in column formation ; the 
Theodore Roosevelt , badly damaged, had turned to 
the south-east, and the Andrew Jackson , greatly 
battered but uninjured in any fighting part, was 
passing between her and the still fresh and vigor- 


THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC 167 


ous Fiirst Bismarck to intercept and meet the 
latter’s fire. Away to the west the Hermann and 
the Germanicus had appeared and were coming 
into action. 

In the pause after the Susquehanna's disaster 
Bert became aware of a trivial sound like the noise 
of an ill-greased, ill-hung door that falls ajar — 
the sound of the men in the Fiirst Bismarck 
cheering. 

And in that pause in the uproar too, the sun 
rose, the dark waters became luminously blue, 
and a torrent of golden light irradiated the world. 
It came like a sudden smile in a scene of hate and 
terror. The cloud veil had vanished as if by 
magic, and the whole immensity of the German 
air-fleet was revealed in the sky; the air-fleet 
stooping now upon its prey. 

“Whack-bang, whack-bang,” the guns resumed, 
but ironclads were not built to fight the zenith, 
and the only hits the Americans scored were a few 
lucky chances in a generally ineffectual rifle fire. 
Their column was now badly broken, the Susque- 
hanna had gone, the Theodore Roosevelt had fallen 
astern out of the line, with her forward guns dis- 
abled, in a heap of wreckage, and the Monitor was 
in some grave trouble. These two had ceased fire 
altogether, and so had the Bremen and Weimar , 
all four ships lying within shot of each other in 
an involuntary truce and with their respective 
flags still displayed. Only four American ships 
now, with the Andrew Jackson leading, kept to 
the south-easterly course. And the Fiirst Bis- 
marck , the Hermann, and the Germanicus steamed 


168 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


parallel to them and drew ahead of them, fighting 
heavily. The V aterland rose slowly in the air in 
preparation for the concluding act of the drama. 

Then, falling into place one behind the other, a 
string of a dozen airships dropped with unhurry- 
ing swiftness down the air in pursuit of the Ameri- 
can fleet. They kept at a height of two thousand 
feet or more until they were over and a little in 
advance of the rearmost ironclad, and then stooped 
swiftly down into a fountain of bullets, and going 
just a little faster than the ship below, pelted her 
thinly protected decks with bombs until they be- 
came sheets of detonating flame. So the airships 
passed one after the other along the American 
column as it sought to keep up its fight with the 
Fiirst Bismarck , the Hermann, and the Germani- 
cus, and each airship added to the destruction and 
confusion its predecessor had made. The Ameri- 
can gunfire ceased, except for a few heroic shots, 
but they still steamed on, obstinately unsubdued, 
bloody, battered, and wrathfully resistant, spit- 
ting bullets at the airships and unmercifully 
pounded by the German ironclads. But now 
Bert had but intermittent glimpses of them 
between the nearer bulks of the airships that 
assailed them. . . . 

It struck Bert suddenly that the whole battle 
was receding and growing small and less thunder- 
ously noisy. The V aterland was rising in the air, 
steadily and silently, until the impact of the guns 
no longer smote upon the heart but came to the 
ear dulled by distance, until the four silenced ships 
to the eastward were little distant things: but 


THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC 169 


were there four? Bert now could see only three 
of those floating, blackened, and smoking rafts of 
ruin against the sun. But the Bremen had two 
boats out ; the Theodore Roosevelt was also drop- 
ping boats to where the drift of minute objects 
struggled, rising and falling on the big, broad 
Atlantic waves. . . . The Vaterland was no 
longer following the fight. The whole of that 
hurrying tumult drove away to the south-east- 
ward, growing smaller and less audible as it 
passed. One of the airships lay on the water 
burning, a remote monstrous fount of flames, 
and far in the south-west appeared first one and 
then three other German ironclads hurrying in 
support of their consorts. . . . 

§ 5 

Steadily the Vaterland soared, and the air-fleet 
soared with her and came round to head for New 
York, and the battle became a little thing far 
away, an incident before the breakfast. It 
dwindled to a string of dark shapes and one 
smoking yellow flare that presently became a 
mere indistinct smear upon the vast horizon and 
| the bright new day, that was at last altogether 
1 lost to sight. . . . 

> So it was that Bert Smallways saw the first fight 
of the airship and the last fight of those strangest 
! things in the whole history of war: the ironclad 
battleships, which began their career with the 
floating batteries of the Emperor Napoleon III in 
the Crimean war and lasted, with an enormous 


170 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


expenditure of human energy and resources, for 
seventy years. In that space of time the world 
produced over twelve thousand five hundred of 
these strange monsters, in schools, in types, in 
series, each larger and heavier and more deadly 
than its predecessors. Each in its turn was hailed 
as the last birth of time, most in their turn were 
sold for old iron. Only about five per cent, of 
them ever fought in a battle. Some foundered, 
some went ashore, and broke up, several rammed 
one another by accident and sank. The lives of 
countless men were spent in their service, the 
splendid genius and patience of thousands of 
engineers and inventors, wealth and material 
beyond estimating ; to their account we must put 
stunted and starved lives on land, millions of 
children sent to toil unduly, innumerable oppor- 
tunities of fine living undeveloped and lost. 
Money had to be found for them at any cost — 
that was the law of a nation’s existence during 
that strange time. Surely they were the weirdest, 
most destructive and wasteful megatheria in the 
whole history of mechanical invention. 

And then cheap things of gas and basket-work 
made an end of them altogether, smiting out of 
the sky ! . . . 

Never before had Bert Smallways seen pure de- 
struction, never had he realised the mischief and 
waste of war. His startled mind rose to the con- 
ception ; this also is in life. Out of all this fierce 
torrent of sensation one impression rose and be- 
came cardinal — the impression of the men of the 
Theodore Roosevelt who had struggled in the water 



“ The sailors stood listening to the man with the helmet 





THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC 171 


after the explosion of the first bomb. “Gaw!” 
he said at the memory; “it might ’ave been me 
and Grubb ! . „ . I suppose you kick about, and 
get the water in your mouf. I don't suppose it 
lasts long." 

He became anxious to see how Kurt was affected 
by these things. Also he perceived he was 
hungry. He hesitated towards the door of the 
cabin and peeped out into the passage. Down 
forward, near the gangway to the men’s mess, 
stood a little group of air sailors looking at some- 
thing that was hidden from him in a recess. One 
of them was in the light diver’s costume Bert had 
already seen in the gas chamber turret, and he 
was moved to walk along and look at this person 
more closely and examine the helmet he carried 
under his arm. But he forgot about the helmet 
when he got to the recess, because there he found 
lying on the floor the dead body of the boy who 
had been killed by a bullet from the Theodore 
Roosevelt . 

Bert had not observed that any bullets at all 
had reached the Vaterland or, indeed, imagined 
himself under fire. He could not understand for 
a time what had killed the lad, and no one ex- 
plained to him. 

The boy lay just as he had fallen and died, with 
his jacket torn and scorched, his shoulder-blade 
smashed and burst away from his body and all the 
left side of his body ripped and rent. There was 
much blood. The sailors stood listening to the 
man with the helmet, who made explanations and 
pointed to the round bullet hole in the floor and 


172 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


the smash in the panel of the passage upon which 
the still vicious missile had spent the residue of 
its energy. All the faces were grave and earnest : 
they were the faces of sober, blond, blue-eyed men 
accustomed to obedience and an orderly life, to 
whom this waste, wet, painful thing that had been 
a comrade came almost as strangely as it did to 
Bert. 

A peal of wild laughter sounded down the 
passage in the direction of Hie little gallery and ‘ 
something spoke — almost shouted — in German, 
in tones of exultation. 

Other voices at a lower, more respectful pitch 
replied. 

“Der Prinz ,” said a voice, and all the men 
became stiffer and less natural. Down the pas- 
sage appeared a group of figures, Lieutenant Kurt 
walking in front carrying a packet of papers. 

He stopped point blank when he saw the thing 
in the recess, and his ruddy face went white. 
“So!” said he in surprise. 

The Prince was following him, talking over his 
shoulder to Von Winterfeld and the Kapitan. 
“Eh?” he said to Kurt, stopping in mid-sentence, 
and followed the gesture of Kurt’s hand. He 
glared at the crumpled object in the recess and 
seemed to think for .a moment. 

He made a slight, careless gesture towards the 
boy’s body and turned to the Kapitan. 

“Dispose of that,” he said in German, and 
passed on, finishing his sentence to Von Winter- 
feld in the same cheerful tone in which it had 
begun. 


THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC 173 


§ 6 

The deep impression of helplessly drowning men 
that Bert had brought from the actual fight in the 
Atlantic mixed itself up inextricably with that of 
the lordly figure of Prince Karl Albert gesturing 
aside the dead body of the Vaterland sailor. 
Hitherto he had rather liked the idea of war as 
being a jolly, smashing, exciting affair, something 
like a Bank Holiday rag on a large scale, and on 
the whole agreeable and exhilarating. Now he 
knew it a little better. 

The next day there was added to his growing 
disillusionment a third ugly impression, trivial 
indeed to describe, a mere necessary everyday 
incident of a state of war, but very distressing to 
his urbanised imagination. One writes “ urban- 
ised” to express the distinctive gentleness of the 
period. It was quite peculiar to the crowded 
townsmen of that time, and different altogether 
from the normal experience of any preceding age, 
that they never saw anything killed, never en- 
countered, save through the mitigating media of 
book or picture, the fact of lethal violence that 
underlies all life. Three times in his existence, 
and three times only, had Bert seen a dead human 
being, and he had never assisted at the killing of 
anything bigger than a new-born kitten. 

The incident that gave him his third shock was 
the execution of one of the men on t the Adler for 
carrying a box of matches. The case was a 
flagrant one. The man had forgotten he had it 


174 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


upon him when coming aboard. Ample notice 
had been given to every one of the gravity of this 
offence, and notices appeared at numerous points 
all over the airships. The man’s defence was that 
he had grown so used to the notices and had been 
so preoccupied with his work that he hadn’t 
applied them to himself; he pleaded, in his de- 
fence, what is indeed in military affairs another 
serious crime, inadvertency. He was tried by his 
captain, and the sentence confirmed by wireless 
telegraphy by the Prince, and it was decided to 
make his death an example to the whole fleet. 
“The Germans,” the Prince declared, “hadn’t 
crossed the Atlantic to go wool gathering.” And 
in order that this lesson in discipline and obedi- 
ence might be visible to every one, it was deter- 
mined not to electrocute or drown, but hang the 
offender. 

Accordingly the air-fleet came clustering round 
the flagship like carp in a pond at feeding-time. 
The Adler hung at the zenith immediately along- 
side the flagship. The whole crew of the Vater- 
land assembled upon the hanging gallery; the 
crews of the other airships manned the air-cham- 
bers, that is to say, clambered up the outer netting 
to the upper sides. The officers appeared upon 
the machine-gun platforms. Bert thought it an 
altogether stupendous sight, looking down, as he 
was, upon the entire fleet. Far off below two 
steamers on the rippled blue water, one British 
and the other flying the American flag, seemed 
the minutest objects, and marked the scale. They 
were immensely distant. Bert stood on the gal- 


THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC 175 


lery, curious to see the execution, but uncomfort- 
able, because that terrible blond Prince was within 
a dozen feet of him, glaring terribly, with his arms 
folded, and his heels together in military fashion. 

They hung the man from the Adler. They gave 
him sixty feet of rope, so that he should hang and 
dangle in the sight of all evil-doers who might be 
hiding matches or contemplating any kindred dis- 
obedience. Bert saw the man standing, a living, 
reluctant man, no doubt scared and rebellious 
enough in his heart, but outwardly erect and 
obedient, on the lower gallery of the Adler about 
a hundred yards away. Then they had thrust 
him overboard. 

Down he fell, hands and feet extending, until 
with a jerk he was at the end of the rope. Then 
he ought to have died and swung edifyingly, but 
instead a more terrible thing happened ; his head 
came right off, and down the body went spinning 
to the sea, feeble, grotesque, fantastic, with the 
head racing it in its fall. 

“Ugh!” said Bert, clutching the rail before 
him, and a sympathetic grunt came from several 
of the men beside him. 

“So!” said the Prince, stiffer and sterner, 
glared for some seconds, then turned to the gang- 
way up into the airship. 

For a long time Bert remained clinging to the 
railing of the gallery. He was almost physically 
sick with the horror of this trifling incident. He 
found it far more dreadful than the battle. He 
was indeed a very degenerate, latter-day, civilised 
person. 


176 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


Late that afternoon Kurt came into the cabin 
and found him curled up on his locker, and looking 
very white and miserable. Kurt had also lost 
something of his pristine freshness. 

“ Sea-sick ?” he asked. 

“No!” 

“We ought to reach New York this evening. 
There’s a good breeze coming up under our tails. 
Then we shall see things.” 

Bert did not answer. 

Kurt opened out folding chair and table, and 
rustled for a time with his maps. Then he fell 
thinking darkly. He roused himself presently, 
and looked at his companion. “What’s the mat- 
ter?” he said. 

“Nothing !” 

Kurt stared threateningly. “What’s the mat- 
ter?” 

“I saw them kill that chap. I saw that flying- 
machine man hit the funnels of the big ironclad. I 
saw that dead chap in the passage. I seen too 
much smashing and killing lately. That’s the 
matter. I don’t like it. I didn’t know war was 
this sort of thing. I’m a civilian. I don’t like 
it.” 

“7 don’t like it,” said Kurt. “By Jove, no!” 

“I’ve read about war, and all that, but when 
you see it it’s different. And I’m gettin’ giddy. 
I’m gettin’ giddy. I didn’t mind a bit being up 
in that balloon at first, but all this looking down 
and floating over things and smashing up people, 
it’s getting on my nerves. See?” 

“It’ll have to get off again. . . 


THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC 177 


Kurt thought. “ You’re not the only one. 
The men are all getting strung up. The flying 
— that’s just flying. Naturally it makes one a 
little swimmy in the head at first. As for the 
killing, we’ve got to be blooded ; that’s all. 
We’re tame, civilised men. And we’ve got to 
get blooded. I suppose there’s not a dozen men 
on the ship who’ve really seen bloodshed. Nice, 
quiet, law-abiding Germans they’ve been so far. 
. . . Here they are — in for it. They’re a bit 
squeamy now, but you wait till they’ve got their 
hands in.” 

He reflected. “ Everybody’s getting a bit 
strung up,” he said. 

He turned again to his maps. Bert sat crumpled 
up in the corner, apparently heedless of him. For 
some time both kept silence. 

“What did the Prince want to go and ’ang that 
chap for?” asked Bert, suddenly. 

“That was all right,” said Kurt, “that was all 
right. Quite right. Here were the orders, plain 
as the nose on your face, and here was that fool 
going about with matches ” 

“Gaw! I shan’t forget that bit in a ’urry,” 
said Bert irrelevantly. 

Kurt did not answer him. He was measuring 
their distance from New York and speculating. 
“Wonder what the American aeroplanes are 
like?” he said. “Something like our drachen- 
flieger. ... We shall know by this time to- 
morrow. ... I wonder what we shall know? 
I wonder. Suppose, after all, they put up a 
fight. . . . Rum sort of fight!” 


N 


178 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


He whistled softly and mused. Presently he 
fretted out of the cabin, and later Bert found him 
in the twilight upon the swinging platform, star- 
ing ahead, and speculating about the things that 
might happen on the morrow. Clouds veiled the 
sea again, and the long straggling wedge of air- 
ships rising and falling as they flew seemed like a 
flock of strange new births in a Chaos that had 
neither earth nor water but only mist and sky. 


CHAPTER VI 


HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 

§ 1 

The City of New York was in the year of the 
German attack the largest, richest, in many re- 
spects the most splendid, and in some, the wicked- 
est city the world had ever seen. She was the 
supreme type of the City of the Scientific Com- 
mercial Age ; she displayed its greatness, its 
power, its ruthless anarchic enterprise, and its 
social disorganisation most strikingly and com- 
pletely. She had long ousted London from her 
pride of place as the modern Babylon, she was the 
centre of the world’s finance, the world’s trade, 
and the world’s pleasure ; and men likened her 
to the apocalyptic cities of the ancient prophets. 
She sat drinking up the wealth of a continent, as 
Rome once drank the wealth of the Mediterranean 
and Babylon the wealth of the east. In her streets 
one found the extremes of magnificence and mis- 
ery, of civilisation and disorder. In one quarter, 
palaces of marble, laced and crowned with light 
and flame and flowers, towered up into her mar- 
vellous twilights beautiful beyond description ; 
in another, a black and sinister polyglot popula- 
tion sweltered in indescribable congestion, in 
179 


180 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


warrens, and excavations beyond the power and 
knowledge of government. Her vice, her crime, 
her law alike were inspired by a fierce and terrible 
energy, and like the great cities of mediaeval Italy, 
her ways were dark and adventurous with private 
war. 

It was the peculiar shape of Manhattan Island, 
pressed in by arms of the sea on either side, and 
incapable of comfortable expansion, except along 
a narrow northward belt, that first gave the New 
York architects their bias for extreme vertical 
dimensions. Every need was lavishly supplied 
them — money, material, labour ; only space was 
restricted. To begin, therefore, they built high 
perforce. But to do so was to discover a whole 
new world of architectural beauty, of exquisite 
ascendant lines, and long after the central con- 
gestion had been relieved by tunnels under the 
sea, four colossal bridges over the east river, and 
a dozen mono-rail cables east and west, the up- 
ward growth went on. In many ways New York 
and her gorgeous plutocracy repeated Venice in 
the magnificence of her architecture, painting, 
metal-work and sculpture, for example, in the 
grim intensity of her political method, in her mari- 
time and commercial ascendancy. But she re- 
peated no previous state at all in the lax disorder 
of her internal administration, a laxity that made 
vast sections of her area lawless beyond precedent, 
so that it was possible for whole districts to be 
impassable, while civil war raged between street 
and street, and for Alsatias to exist in her midst 
in which the official police never set foot. She 


HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 181 


was an ethnic whirlpool. The flags of all nations 
flew in her harbour, and at the climax, the yearly 
coming and going overseas numbered together 
upwards of two million human beings. To Europe 
she was America, to America she was the gateway 
of the world. But to tell the story of New York 
would be to write a social history of the world; 
saints and martyrs, dreamers and scoundrels, 
the traditions of a thousand races and a thousand 
religions, went to her making and throbbed and 
jostled in her streets. And over all that tor- 
rential confusion of men and purposes fluttered 
that stfange flag, the stars and stripes, that meant 
at once the noblest thing in life, and the least 
noble, that is to say, Liberty on the one hand, 
and on the other the base jealousy the individual 
self-seeker feels towards the common purpose of 
the State. 

For many generations New York had taken no 
heed of war, save as a thing that happened far 
away, that affected prices and supplied the news- 
papers with exciting headlines and pictures. 
The New Yorkers felt perhaps even more cer- 
tainly than the English had done that war in 
their own land was an impossible thing. In that 
they shared the delusion of all North America. 
They felt as secure as spectators at a bullfight ; they 
risked their money perhaps on the result, but that 
was all. And such ideas of war as the common 
Americans possessed were derived from the 
limited, picturesque, adventurous war of the past. 
They saw war as they saw history, through an iri- 
descent mist, deodorised, scented indeed, with all 


182 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


its essential cruelties tactfully hidden away. They 
were inclined to regret it as something ennobling, 
to sigh that it could no longer come into their own 
private experience. They read with interest, if 
not with avidity, of their new guns, of their im- 
mense and still more immense ironclads, of their 
incredible and still more incredible explosives, but 
just what these tremendous engines of destruction 
might mean for their personal lives never entered 
their heads. They did not, so far as one can 
judge from their contemporary literature, think 
that they meant anything to their personal lives 
at all. They thought America was safe amidst 
all this piling up of explosives. They cheered the 
flag by habit and tradition, they despised other 
nations, and whenever there was an international 
difficulty they were intensely patriotic, that is to 
say, they were ardently against any native poli- 
tician who did not say, threaten, and do harsh and 
uncompromising things to the antagonist people. 
They were spirited to Asia, spirited to Germany, 
so spirited to Great Britain that the interna- 
tional attitude of the mother country to her great 
daughter was constantly compared in contem- 
porary caricature to that between a hen-pecked 
husband and a vicious young wife. And for the 
rest, they all went about their business and pleas- 
ure as if war had died out with the megathe- 
rium. . . . 

And then suddenly, into a world peacefully 
busied for the most part upon armaments and the 
perfection of explosives, war came; came the 
shock of realising that the guns were going off, 


HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 183 


that the masses of inflammable material all over 
the world were at last ablaze. 

§ 2 

The immediate effect upon New York of the 
sudden onset of war was merely to intensify her 
normal vehemence. 

The newspapers and magazines that fed the 
American mind — for books upon this impatient 
continent had become simply material for the 
energy of collectors — were instantly a corusca- 
tion of war pictures and of headlines that rose like 
rockets and burst like shells. To the normal high- 
strung energy of New York streets was added a 
touch of war-fever. Great crowds assembled, 
more especially in the dinner hour, in Madison 
Square about the Farragut monument, to listen 
to and cheer patriotic speeches, and a veritable 
epidemic of little flags and buttons swept through 
these great torrents of swiftly moving young 
people, who poured into New York of a morning 
by car and mono-rail and subway and train, to 
toil, and ebb home again between the hours of five 
and seven. It was dangerous not to wear a war 
button. The splendid music-halls of the time 
sank every topic in patriotism and evolved scenes 
of wild enthusiasm, strong men wept at the sight 
of the national banner sustained by the whole 
strength of the ballet, and special searchlights 
and illuminations amazed the watching angels. 
The churches re-echoed the national enthusiasm 
in graver key and slower measure, and the aerial 


184 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


and naval preparations on the East River were 
greatly incommoded by the multitude of excur- 
sion steamers which thronged, helpfully cheering, 
about them. The trade in small-arms was enor- 
mously stimulated, and many overwrought citizens 
found an immediate relief for their emotions in 
letting off fireworks of a more or less heroic, 
dangerous, and national character in the public 
streets. Small children’s air-balloons of the latest 
model attached to string became a serious check 
to the pedestrian in Central Park. And amidst 
scenes of indescribable emotion the Albany legis- 
lature in permanent session, and with a generous 
suspension of rules and precedents, passed through 
both Houses the long-disputed Bill for universal 
military service in New York State. 

Critics of the American character are disposed 
to consider that up to the actual impact of the 
German attack the people of New York dealt 
altogether too much with the war as if it was a 
political demonstration. Little or no damage, 
they urge, was done to either the German or 
Japanese forces by the wearing of buttons, the 
waving of small flags, the fireworks, or the songs. 
They forgot that, under the conditions of warfare 
a century of science had brought about, the non- 
military section of the population could do no 
serious damage in any form to their enemies, and 
that there was no reason, therefore, why they 
should not do as they did. The balance of mili- 
tary efficiency was shifting back from the many 
to the few, from the common to the specialised. 
The days when the emotional infantryman decided 


HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 185 


battles had passed by for ever. War had become 
a matter of apparatus, of special training and 
skill of the most intricate kind. It had become 
undemocratic. And whatever the value of the 
popular excitement, there can be no denying that 
the small regular establishment of the United 
States Government, confronted by this totally 
unexpected emergency of an armed invasion from 
Europe, acted with vigour, science, and imagina- 
tion. They were taken by surprise so far as the 
diplomatic situation was concerned, and their 
equipment for building either navigables or aero- 
planes was contemptible in comparison with the 
huge German parks. Still they set to work at 
once to prove to the world that the spirit that 
had created the Monitor and the Southern sub- 
marines of 1864 was not dead. The chief of the 
aeronautic establishment near West Point was 
Cabot Sinclair, and he allowed himself but one 
single moment of the posturing that was so uni- 
versal in that democratic time. We have chosen 
our epitaphs,” he said to a reporter, “and we are 
going to have, ‘They did all they could.’ Now 
run away ! ” 

The curious thing is that they did all do all 
they could; there is no exception known. Their 
only defect indeed was a defect of style. 

One of the most striking facts historically about 
this war, and the one that makes the complete 
separation that had arisen between the methods 
of warfare and the necessity of democratic sup- 
port, is the effectual secrecy of the Washington 
authorities about their airships. They did not 


186 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


bother to confide a single fact of their preparations 
to the public. They did not even condescend to 
talk to Congress. They burked and suppressed 
every inquiry. The war was fought by the Presi- 
dent and the Secretaries of State in an entirely 
autocratic manner. Such publicity as they sought 
was merely to anticipate and prevent inconvenient 
agitation to defend particular points. They real- 
ised that the chief danger in aerial warfare from 
an excitable and intelligent public would be a 
clamour for local airships and aeroplanes to defend 
local interests. This, with such resources as they 
possessed, might lead to a fatal division and dis- 
tribution of the national forces. Particularly they 
feared that they might be forced into a prema- 
ture action to defend New York. They realised 
with prophetic insight that this would be the par- 
ticular advantage the Germans would seek. So 
they took great pains to direct the popular mind 
towards defensive artillery, and to divert it from 
any thought of aerial battle. Their real prepara- 
tions they masked beneath ostensible ones. There 
was at Washington a large reserve of naval guns, 
and these were distributed rapidly, conspicuously, 
and with much press attention, among the Eastern 
cities. They were mounted for the most part 
upon hills and prominent crests round the threat- 
ened centres of population. They were mounted 
upon rough adaptations of the Doan swivel, which 
at that time gave the maximum vertical range to 
a heavy gun. Much of this artillery was still un- 
mounted, and nearly all of it was unprotected 
when the German air-fleet reached New York. 


HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 187 

And down in the crowded streets, when that 
occurred, the readers of the New York papers 
were regaling themselves with wonderful and 
wonderfully illustrated accounts of such matters 
as : — 

THE SECRET OF THE THUNDERBOLT 

AGED SCIENTIST PERFECTS 
ELECTRIC GUN 

TO ELECTROCUTE AIRSHIP CREWS BY 
UPWARD LIGHTNING 

WASHINGTON ORDERS FIVE 
HUNDRED 

WAR SECRETARY LODGE DELIGHTED 

SAYS THEY WILL SUIT THE 
GERMANS 

DOWN TO THE GROUND 

PRESIDENT PUBLICLY APPLAUDS 
THIS MERRY QUIP 


188 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


§3 

The German fleet reached New York in advance 
of the news of the American naval disaster. It 
reached New York in the late afternoon and was 
first seen by watchers at Ocean Grove and Long 
Branch coming swiftly out of the southward sea 
and going away to the north-west. The flagship 
passed almost vertically over the Sandy Hook 
observation station, rising rapidly as it did so, 
and in a few minutes all New York was vibrating 
to the Staten Island guns. 

Several of these guns, and especially that at 
Giffords and the one on Beacon Hill above Mata- 
wan, were remarkably well handled. The former, 
at a distance of five miles, and with an elevation of 
six thousand feet, sent a shell to burst so close to 
the Vaterland that a pane of the Prince’s forward 
window was smashed by a fragment. This sud- 
den explosion made Bert tuck in his head with the 
celerity of a startled tortoise. The whole air- fleet 
immediately went up steeply to a height of about 
twelve thousand feet, and at that level passed 
unscathed over the ineffectual guns. The air- 
ships lined out as they moved forward into the 
form of a flattened V, with its apex towards 
the city, and with the flagship going highest at the 
apex. The two ends of the V passed over Plum- 
field and Jamaica Bay respectively, and the Prince 
directed his course a little to the east of the Nar- 
rows, soared over the Upper Bay, and came to 
rest above Jersey City in a position that domi- 
nated lower New York. There the monsters hung, 


HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 189 


large and wonderful in the evening light, serenely 
regardless of the occasional rocket explosions and 
flashing shell-bursts in the lower air. 

It was a pause of mutual inspection. For a 
time naive humanity swamped the conventions of 
warfare altogether; the interest of the millions 
below and of the thousands above alike was 
spectacular. The evening was unexpectedly fine 
— only a few thin level bands of clouds at seven 
or eight thousand feet broke its luminous clarity. 
The wind had dropped; it was an evening in- 
finitely peaceful and still. The heavy concussions 
of the distant guns and those incidental harmless 
pyrotechnics at the level of the clouds seemed to 
have as little to do with killing and force, terror 
and submission, as a salute at a naval review. 
Below, every point of vantage bristled with spec- 
tators, the roofs of the towering buildings, the 
public squares, the active ferry boats, and every 
favourable street intersection had its crowds: all 
the river piers were dense with people, the Bat- 
tery Park was solid black with east-side popula- 
tion, and every position of advantage in Central 
Park and along Riverside Drive had its peculiar 
and characteristic assembly from the adjacent 
streets. The footways of the great bridges over 
the East River were also closely packed and 
blocked. Everywhere shopkeepers had left their 
shops, men their work, and women and children 
their homes, to come out and see the marvel. 

“It beat,” they declared, “the newspapers.” 

And from above, many of the occupants of the 
airships stared with an equal curiosity. No city 


190 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


in the world was ever so finely placed as New 
York, so magnificently cut up by sea and bluff 
and river, so admirably disposed to display the 
tall effects of buildings, the complex immensities 
of bridges and mono-railways and feats of engi- 
neering. London, Paris, Berlin, were shapeless, 
low agglomerations beside it. Its port reached 
to its heart like Venice, and, like Venice, it was 
obvious, dramatic, and proud. Seen from above 
it was alive with crawling trains and cars, and at 
a thousand points it was already breaking into 
quivering light. New York was altogether at its 
best that evening, its splendid best. 

“Gaw! What a place l” said Bert. 

It was so great, and in its collective effect so 
pacifically magnificent, that to make war upon it 
seemed incongruous beyond measure, like laying 
siege to the National Gallery or attacking respect- 
able people in an hotel dining-room with battle- 
axe and mail. It was in its entirety so large, so 
complex, so delicately immense, that to bring it 
to the issue of warfare was like driving a crowbar 
into the mechanism of a clock. And the fish-like 
shoal of great airships hovering light and sunlit 
above, filling the sky, seemed equally remote from 
the ugly forcefulness of war. To Kurt, to Small- 
ways, to I know not how many more of the people 
in the air-fleet came the distinctest apprehension 
of these incompatibilities. But in the head of 
the Prince Karl Albert were the vapours of ro- 
mance: he was a conqueror, and this was the 
enemy’s city. The greater the city, the greater 
the triumph. No doubt he had a time of tre- 



“ The fires raged and the jets of water flew. Every- 
where, TOO, WERE FLAGSTAFFS DEVOID OF FLAGS ) ONE WHITE 
SHEET DROOPED AND FLAPPED” 



HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 191 


mendous exultation and sensed beyond all prece- 
dent the sense of power that night. 

There came an end at last to that pause. Some 
wireless communications had failed of a satis- 
factory ending, and fleet and city remembered 
they were hostile powers. “Look!” cried the 
multitude; “look!” 

“What are they doing?” 

“What?” . . . Down through the twilight 
sank five attacking airships, one to the Navy 
Yard on East River, one to City Hall, two over 
the great business buildings of Wall Street and 
Lower Broadway, one to the Brooklyn Bridge, 
dropping from among their fellows through the 
danger zone from the distant guns smoothly and 
rapidly to a safe proximity to the city masses. 
At that descent all the cars in the streets stopped 
with dramatic suddenness, and all the lights that 
had been coming on in the streets and houses 
went out again. For the City Hall had awakened 
and was conferring by telephone with the Federal 
command and taking measures for defence. The 
City Hall was asking for airships, refusing to sur- 
render as Washington advised, and developing 
into a centre of intense emotion, of hectic activity. 
Everywhere and hastily the police began to clear 
the assembled crowds. “Go to your homes,” 
they said ; and the word was passed from mouth 
to mouth, “There’s going to be trouble.” A chill 
of apprehension ran through the city, and men 
hurrying in the unwonted darkness across City 
Hall Park and Union Square came upon the dim 
forms of soldiers and guns, and were challenged 


192 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


and sent back. In half an hour New York had 
passed from serene sunset and gaping admiration 
to a troubled and threatening twilight. 

The first loss of life occurred in the panic rush 
from Brooklyn Bridge as the airship approached it. 

With the cessation of the traffic an unusual 
stillness came upon New York, and the disturb- 
ing concussions of the futile defending guns on 
the hills about grew more and more audible. At 
last these ceased also. A pause of further nego- 
tiation followed. People sat in darkness, sought 
counsel from telephones that were dumb. Then 
into the expectant hush came a great crash and 
uproas, the breaking down of the Brooklyn Bridge, 
the rifle fire from the Navy Yard, and the bursting 
of bombs in Wall Street and the City Hall. New 
York as a whole could do nothing, could under- 
stand nothing. New York in the darkness peered 
and listened to these distant sounds until presently 
they died away as suddenly as they had begun. 
“What could be happening?” They asked it in 
vain. 

A long, vague period intervened, and people 
looking out of the windows of upper rooms dis- 
covered the dark hulls of German airships, gliding 
slowly and noiselessly, quite close at hand. Then 
quietly the electric lights came on again, and an 
uproar of nocturnal newsvendors began in the 
streets. 

The units of that vast and varied population 
bought and learnt what had happened ; there had 
been a fight and New York had hoisted the white 
flag. . . . 


HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 193 


§ 4 

The lamentable incidents that followed the sur- 
render of New York seem now in the retrospect 
to be but the necessary and inevitable consequence 
of the clash of modern appliances and social con- 
ditions produced by the scientific century on the 
one hand, and the tradition of a crude, romantic 
patriotism on the other. At first people received 
the fact with an irresponsible detachment, much 
as they would have received the slowing down of 
the train in which they were travelling or the 
erection of a public monument by the city to 
which they belonged. 

“We have surrendered. Dear me! have we?” 
was rather the manner in which the first news was 
met. They took it in the same spectacular spirit 
they had displayed at the first apparition of the 
air-fleet. Only slowly was this realisation of a 
capitulation suffused with the flush of passion, 
only with reflection did they make any personal 
application. “We have surrendered!” came 
later; “in us America is defeated.” Then they 
began to burn and tingle. 

The newspapers which were issued about one in 
the morning contained no particulars of the terms 
upon which New York had yielded — nor did 
they give any intimation of the quality of the 
brief conflict that had preceded the capitulation. 
The later issues remedied these deficiencies. There 
came the explicit statement of the agreement to 
victual the German airships, to supply the com- 
plement of explosives to replace those employed 


194 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


in the fight and in the destruction of the North 
Atlantic fleet, to pay the enormous ransom of 
forty million dollars, and to surrender the flotilla 
in the East River. There came, too, longer and 
longer descriptions of the smashing up of the 
City Hall and the Navy Yard, and people began 
to realise faintly what those brief minutes of 
uproar had meant. They read the tale of men 
blown to bits, of futile soldiers in that localised 
battle fighting against hope amidst an indescrib- 
able wreckage, of flags hauled down by weeping 
men. And these strange nocturnal editions con- 
tained also the first brief cables from Europe of 
the fleet disaster, the North Atlantic fleet for 
which New York had always felt an especial pride 
and solicitude. Slowly, hour by hour, the collec- 
tive consciousness woke up, the tide of patriotic 
astonishment and humiliation came floating in. 
America had come upon disaster; suddenly New 
York discovered herself, with amazement giving 
place to wrath unspeakable, a conquered city 
under the hand of her conqueror. 

As that fact shaped itself in the public mind, 
there sprang up, as flames spring up, an angry 
repudiation. “No!” cried New York, waking in 
the dawn. “No! I am not defeated. This is a 
dream.” Before day broke the swift American 
anger was running through all the city, through 
every soul in those contagious millions. Before 
it took action, before it took shape, the men in 
the airships could feel the gigantic insurgence of 
emotion, as cattle and natural creatures feel, it is 
said, the coming of an earthquake. The news- 


HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 195 


papers of the Knype group first gave the thing 
words and a formula. “We do not agree,” they 
said simply. “We have been betrayed!” Men 
took that up everywhere, it passed from mouth 
to mouth, at every street corner under the paling 
lights of dawn orators stood unchecked, calling 
upon the spirit of America to arise, making the 
shame a personal reality to every one who heard. 
To Bert, listening five hundred feet above, it 
seemed that the city, which had at first produced 
only confused noises, was now humming like a 
hive of bees — of very angry bees. 

After the smashing of the City Hall and Post- 
Office, the white flag had been hoisted from a 
tower of the old Park Row building, and thither 
had gone Mayor O’Hagen, urged thither indeed 
by the terror-stricken property owners of lower 
New York, to negotiate the capitulation with Yon 
Winterfeld. The Vaterlandj having dropped the 
secretary by a rope ladder, remained hovering, 
circling very slowly above the great buildings, old 
and new, that clustered round City Hall Park, 
while the Helmholz, which had done the fighting 
there, rose overhead to a height of perhaps two 
thousand feet. So Bert had a near view of all 
that occurred in that central place. The City 
Hall and Court House, the Post-Office and a mass 
of buildings on the west side of Broadway, had 
been badly damaged, and the three former were 
a heap of blackened ruins. In the case of the 
first two the loss of life had not been considerable, 
but a great multitude of workers, including many 
girls and women, had been caught in the destruc- 


196 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


tion of the Post-Office, and a little army of volun- 
teers with white badges entered behind the fire- 
men, bringing out the often still living bodies, for 
the most part frightfully charred, and carrying 
them into the big Monson building close at hand. 
Everywhere the busy firemen were directing their 
bright streams of water upon the smouldering 
masses : their hose lay about the square, and long 
cordons of police held back the gathering black 
masses of people, chiefly from the east side, from 
these central activities. 

In violent and extraordinary contrast with this 
scene of destruction, close at hand were the huge 
newspaper establishments of Park Row. They 
were all alight and working; they had not been 
abandoned even while the actual bomb throwing 
was going on, and now staff and presses were 
vehemently active, getting out the story, the im- 
mense and dreadful story of the night, develop- 
ing comment and, in most cases, spreading the 
idea of resistance under the very noses of the air- 
ships. For a long time Bert could not imagine 
what these callously active offices could be, then 
he detected the noise of the presses and emitted 
his “Gaw!” 

Beyond these newspaper buildings again, and 
partially hidden by the arches of the old Elevated 
Railway of New York (long since converted into a 
mono-rail), there was another cordon of police and 
a sort of encampment of ambulances and doctors, 
busy with the dead and wounded who had been 
killed early in the night by the panic upon Brook- 
lyn Bridge. All this he saw in the perspectives of 


HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 197 


a bird’s-eye view, as things happening in a big, 
irregular-shaped pit below him, between cliffs of 
high building. Northward he looked along the 
steep canon of Broadway, down whose length at 
intervals crowds were assembling about excited 
speakers ; and when he lifted his eyes he saw the 
chimneys and cable-stacks and roof spaces of New 
York, and everywhere now over these the watch- 
ing, debating people clustered, except where the 
fires raged and the jets of water flew. Every- 
where, too, were flagstaffs devoid of flags; one 
white sheet drooped and flapped and drooped 
again over the Park Row buildings. And upon 
the lurid lights, the festering movement and in- 
tense shadows of this strange scene, there was 
breaking now the cold, impartial dawn. 

For Bert Smallways all this was framed in the 
frame of the open porthole. It was a pale, dim 
world outside that dark and tangible rim. All 
night he had clutched at that rim, jumped and 
quivered at explosions, and watched phantom 
events. Now he had been high and now low ; now 
almost beyond hearing, now flying close to crash- 
ings and shouts and outcries. He had seen air- 
ships flying low and swift over darkened and 
groaning streets; watched great buildings, sud- 
denly red-lit amidst the shadows, crumple at the 
smashing impact of bombs; witnessed for the 
first time in his life the grotesque, swift onset of 
insatiable conflagrations. From it all he felt de- 
tached, disembodied. The Vaterland did not even 
fling a bomb ; she watched and ruled. Then down 
they had come at last to hover over City Hall Park, 


198 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


and it had crept in upon his mind, chillingly, ter- 
rifyingly, that these illuminated black masses were 
great offices afire, and that the going to and fro of 
minute, dim spectres of lantern-lit grey and white 
was a harvesting of the wounded and the dead. 
As the light grew clearer he began to understand 
more and more what these crumpled black things 
signified. . . . 

He had watched hour after hour since first New 
York had risen out of the blue indistinctness of the 
landfall. With the daylight he experienced an in- 
tolerable fatigue. 

He lifted weary eyes to the pink flush in the sky, 
yawned immensely, and crawled back whispering 
to himself across the cabin to the locker. He did 
not so much lie down upon that as fall upon it and 
instantly become asleep. 

There, hours after, sprawling undignified and 
sleeping profoundly, Kurt found him, a very image 
of the democratic mind confronted with the prob- 
lems of a time too complex for its apprehension. 
His face was pale and indifferent, his mouth wide 
open, and he snored. He snored disagreeably. 

Kurt regarded him for a moment with a mild 
distaste. Then he kicked his ankle. 

“Wake up !” he said to Small ways’ stare, “and 
lie down decent.” 

Bert sat up and rubbed his eyes. 

“Any more fightin’ yet?” he asked. 

“No,” said Kurt, and sat down, a tired man. 

“Gott!” he cried presently, rubbing his hands 
over his face, “but I’d like a cold bath! I’ve 
been looking for stray bullet holes in the air- 


HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 199 

chambers all night until now.” He yawned. “I 
must sleep. You’d better clear out, Smallways. 
I can’t stand you here this morning. You’re so 
infernally ugly and useless. Have you had your 
rations? No! Well, go in and get ’em, and 
don’t come back. Stick in the gallery. . . .” 

§ 5 

So Bert, slightly refreshed by coffee and sleep, 
resumed his helpless co-operation in the War in 
the Air. He went down into the little gallery as 
the lieutenant had directed, and clung to the rail 
at the extreme end beyond the look-out man, try- 
ing to seem as inconspicuous and harmless a frag- 
ment of life as possible. 

A wind was rising rather strongly from the 
south-east. It obliged the V aterland to come 
about in that direction, and made her roll a great 
deal as she went to and fro over Manhattan Island. 
Away in the north-west clouds gathered. The 
throb-throb of her slow screw working against the 
breeze was much more perceptible than when she 
was going full speed ahead; and the friction of 
the wind against the underside of the gas-chamber 
drove a series of shallow ripples along it and made 
a faint flapping sound like, but fainter than, the 
beating of ripples under the stem of a boat. She 
was stationed over the temporary City Hall in the 
Park Row building, and every now and then she 
would descend to resume communication with the 
mayor and with Washington. But the restless- 
ness of the Prince would not suffer him to remain 


200 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


for long in any one place. Now he would circle 
over the Hudson and East River; now he would 
go up high, as if to peer away into the blue dis- 
tances; once he ascended so swiftly and so far 
that mountain sickness overtook him and the 
crew and forced him down again ; and Bert shared 
the dizziness and nausea. 

The swaying view varied with these changes of 
altitude. Now they would be low and close, and 
he would distinguish in that steep, unusual per- 
spective, windows, doors, street and sky , signs, 
people and the minutest details, and watch the 
enigmatical behaviour of crowds and clusters upon 
the roofs and in the streets; then as they soared 
the details would shrink, the sides of streets draw 
together, the view widen, the people cease to be 
significant. At the highest the effect was that of 
a concave relief map; Bert saw the dark and 
crowded land everywhere intersected by shining 
waters, saw the Hudson River like a spear of 
silver, and Lower Island Sound like a shield. 
Even to Bert’s unphilosophical mind the contrast 
of city below and fleet above pointed an opposi- 
tion, the opposition of the adventurous American’s 
tradition and character with German order and 
discipline. Below, the immense buildings, tre- 
mendous and fine as they were, seemed like the 
giant trees of a jungle fighting for life; their 
picturesque magnificence was as planless as the 
chances of crag and gorge, their casualty enhanced 
by the smoke and confusion of still unsubdued 
and spreading conflagrations. In the sky soared 
the German airships like beings in a different, en- 


HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 201 


tirely more orderly world, all oriented to the same 
angle of the horizon, uniform in build and appear- 
ance, moving accurately with one purpose as a 
pack of wolves will move, distributed with the 
most precise and effectual co-operation. 

It dawned upon Bert that hardly a third of the 
fleet was visible. The others had gone upon 
errands he could not imagine, beyond the compass 
of that great circle of earth and sky. He won- 
dered, but there was no one to ask. As the day 
wore on, about a dozen reappeared in the east 
with their stores replenished from the flotilla and 
towing a number of drachenflieger. Towards 
afternoon the weather thickened, driving clouds 
appeared in the south-west and ran together and 
seemed to engender more clouds, and the wind 
came round into that quarter and blew stronger. 
Towards the evening the wind became a gale into 
which the now tossing airships had to beat. 

All that day the Prince was negotiating with 
Washington, while his detached scouts sought far 
and wide over the Eastern States for anything re- 
sembling an aeronautic park. A squadron of 
twenty airships detached overnight had dropped 
out of the air upon Niagara and was holding the 
town and power works. 

Meanwhile the insurrectionary movement in the 
giant city grew uncontrollable. In spite of five 
great fires already involving many acres, and 
spreading steadily, New York was still not satis- 
fied that she was beaten. 

At first the rebellious spirit below found vent 
only in isolated shouts, street-crowd speeches, and 


202 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


newspaper suggestions ; then it found much more 
definite expression in the appearance in the morn- 
ing sunlight of American flags at point after point 
above the architectural cliffs of the city. It is 
quite possible that in many cases this spirited 
display of bunting by a city already surrendered 
was the outcome of the innocent informality of 
the American mind, but it is also undeniable that 
in many it was a deliberate indication that the 
people “felt wicked.” 

The German sense of correctitude was deeply 
shocked by this outbreak. The Graf von Winter- 
feld immediately communicated with the mayor, 
and pointed out the irregularity, and the fire 
look-out stations were instructed in the matter. 
The New York police was speedily hard at work, 
and a foolish contest in full swing between im- 
passioned citizens resolved to keep the flag flying, 
and irritated and worried officers instructed to 
pull it down. 

The trouble became acute at last in the streets 
above Columbia University. The captain of the 
airship watching this quarter seems to have 
stooped to lasso and drag from its staff a flag 
hoisted upon Morgan Hall. As he did so a volley 
of rifle and revolver shots was fired from the upper 
windows of the huge apartment building that 
stands between the University and Riverside 
Drive. 

Most of these were ineffectual, but two or three 
perforated gas-chambers, and one smashed the 
hand and arm of a man upon the forward plat- 
form. The sentinel on the lower gallery im- 


HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 203 


mediately replied, and the machine gun on the 
shield of the eagle let fly and promptly stopped 
any further shots. The airship rose and signalled 
the flagship and City Hall, police and militiamen 
were directed at once to the spot, and this particu- 
lar incident closed. 

But hard upon that came the desperate attempt 
of a party of young clubmen from New York, 
who, inspired by patriotic and adventurous im- 
aginations, slipped off in half a dozen motor-cars 
to Beacon Hill, and set to work with remarkable 
vigour to improvise a fort about the Doan swivel 
gun that had been placed there. They found it 
still in the hands of the disgusted gunners, who 
had been ordered to cease fire at the capitulation, 
and it was easy to infect these men with their 
own spirit. They declared their gun hadn’t had 
half a chance, and were burning to show what it 
could do. Directed by the newcomers, they 
made a trench and bank about the mounting of 
the piece, and constructed flimsy shelter-pits of 
corrugated iron. 

They were actually loading the gun when they 
were observed by the airship Preussen , and the 
shell they succeeded in firing before the bombs 
of the latter smashed them and their crude de- 
fences to fragments, burst over the middle gas- 
chambers of the Bingen , and brought her to earth, 
disabled, upon Staten Island. She was badly 
deflated, and dropped among trees, over which 
her empty central gas-bags spread in canopies 
and festoons. Nothing, however, had caught 
fire, and her men were speedily at work upon 


204 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


her repair. They behaved with a confidence 
that verged upon indiscretion. While most of 
them commenced patching the tears of the 
membrane, half a dozen of them started off for 
the nearest road in search of a gas main, and 
presently found themselves prisoners in the 
hands of a hostile crowd. Close at hand was 
a number of villa residences, whose occupants 
speedily developed from an unfriendly curiosity 
to aggression. At that time the police control of 
the large polyglot population of Staten Island had 
become very lax, and scarcely a householc but 
had its rifle or pistols and ammunition. These 
were presently produced, and after two or three 
misses one of the men at work was hit in the foot. 
Thereupon the Germans left their sewing and mend- 
ing, took cover among the trees, and replied. 

The crackling of shots speedily brought the 
Preussen and Kiel on the scene, and with a few 
hand grenades they made short work of every 
villa within a mile. A number of non-combatant 
American men, women, and children were killed 
and the actual assailants driven off. For a time 
the repairs went on in peace under the immediate 
protection of these two airships. Then when 
they returned to their quarters, an intermittent 
sniping and fighting round the stranded Bingen 
was resumed, and went on all the afternoon, 
and merged at last in the general combat of the 
evening. . . . 

About eight the Bingen was rushed by an armed 
mob, and all its defenders killed after a fierce, 
disorderly struggle. 



“ AS THE AIRSHIPS SAILED ALONG THEY SMASHED UP THE CITY AS 
A CHILD WILL SHATTER ITS CITIES OF BRICK AND CARD ” 






















































































































































































































































• - 






























. 










































































































HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 205 


The difficulty of the Germans in both these 
cases came from the impossibility of landing any 
efficient force or, indeed, any force at all from 
the air-fleet. The airships were quite unequal 
to the transport of any adequate landing parties ; 
their complement of men was just sufficient to 
manoeuvre and fight them in the air. From 
above they could inflict immense damage; they 
could reduce any organised Government to a 
capitulation in the briefest space, but they could 
not disarm, much less could they occupy, the 
surrendered areas below. They had to trust to 
the pressure upon the authorities below of a 
threat to renew the bombardment. It was their 
sole resource. No doubt, with a highly organised 
and undamaged Government and a homogeneous 
and well-disciplined people that would have 
sufficed to keep the peace. But this was not the 
American case. Not only was the New York 
Government a weak one and insufficiently pro- 
vided with police, but the destruction of the 
City Hall and Post-Office and other central 
ganglia had hopelessly disorganised the co-opera- 
tion of part with part. The street cars and 
railways had ceased; the telephone service was 
out of gear and only worked intermittently. 
The Germans had struck at the head, and the 
head was conquered and stunned — only to 
release the body from its rule. New York had 
become a headless monster, no longer capable 
of collective submission. Everywhere it lifted 
itself rebelliously ; everywhere authorities and 
officials left to their own initative were joining 


206 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


in the arming and flag-hoisting and excitement 
of that afternoon. 


§ 6 

The disintegrating truce gave place to a defi- 
nite general breach with the assassination of the 
Wetterhorn — for that is the only possible word 
for the act — above Union Square, and not a 
mile away from the exemplary ruins of City Hall. 
This occurred late in the afternoon, between five 
and six. By that time the weather had changed 
very much for the worse, and the operations of 
the airships were embarrassed by the necessity 
they were under of keeping head on to the gusts. 
A series of squalls, with hail and thunder, followed 
one another from the south by south-east, and 
in order to avoid these as much as possible, the 
air-fleet came low over the houses, diminishing 
its range of observation and exposing itself to 
a rifle attack. 

Overnight there had been a gun placed in Union 
Square. It had never been mounted, much less 
fired, and in the darkness after the surrender it 
was taken with its supplies and put out of the 
way under the arches of the great Dexter build- 
ing. Here late in the morning it was remarked 
by a number of patriotic spirits. They set to 
work to hoist and mount it inside the upper floors 
of the place. They made, in fact, a masked 
battery behind the decorous office blinds, and 
there lay in wait as simply excited as children, 
until at last the stem of the luckless Wetterhorn 


HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 207 


appeared, beating and rolling at quarter speed 
over the recently reconstructed pinnacles of 
Tiffany’s. Promptly that one-gun battery un- 
masked. The airship’s look-out man must have 
seen the whole of the tenth story of the Dexter 
building crumble out and smash in the street 
below to discover the black muzzle looking out 
from the shadows behind. Then perhaps the 
shell hit him. 

The gun fired two shells before the frame of 
the Dexter building collapsed, and each shell 
raked the Wetterhorn from stem to stern. They 
smashed her exhaustively. She crumpled up 
like a can that has been kicked by a heavy boot, 
her forepart came down in the square, and the 
rest of her length, with a great snapping and 
twisting of shafts and stays, descended, collaps- 
ing athwart Tammany Hall and the streets tow- 
ards Second Avenue. Her gas escaped to mix 
with air, and the air of her rent balloonette poured 
into her deflating gas-chambers. Then with an 
immense impact she exploded. . . . 

The V aterland at that time was beating up to 
the south of City Hall from over the ruins of the 
Brooklyn Bridge, and the reports of the gun, 
followed by the first crashes of the collapsing 
Dexter building, brought Kurt and Smallways 
to the cabin porthole. They were in time to see 
the flash of the exploding gun, and then they 
were first flattened against the window and then 
rolled head over heels across the floor of the cabin 
by the air wave of the explosion. The V aterland 
bounded like a football some one has kicked, and 


208 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


when they looked out again, Union Square was 
small and remote and shattered, as though some 
cosmically vast giant had rolled over it. The 
buildings to the east of it were ablaze at a dozen 
points, under the flaming tatters and warping 
skeleton of the airship, and all the roofs and walls 
were ridiculously askew and crumbling as one 
looked. “Gaw!” said Bert. “What’s hap- 
pened? Look at the people!” 

But before Kurt could produce an explanation, 
the shrill bells of the airship were ringing to 
quarters, and he had to go. Bert hesitated and 
stepped thoughtfully into the passage, looking 
back at the window as he did so. He was knocked 
off his feet at once by the Prince, who was rushing 
headlong from his cabin to the central magazine. 

Bert had a momentary impression of the great 
figure of the Prince, white with rage, bristling 
with gigantic anger, his huge fist swinging. “Blut 
und Eisen!” cried the Prince, as one who swears. 
“Oh! Blut und Eisen!” 

Some one fell over Bert — something in the 
manner of falling suggested Von Winterfeld — 
and some one else paused and kicked him 
spitefully and hard. Then he was sitting up in 
the passage, rubbing a freshly bruised cheek and 
readjusting the bandage he still wore on his 
head. “Dem that Prince,” said Bert, indignant 
beyond measure. “’E ’asn’t the menners of a 
’og!” 

He stood up, collected his wits for a minute, 
and then went slowly towards the gangway of the 
little gallery. As he did so he heard noises sug- 


HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 209 


gestive of the return of the Prince. The lot of 
them were coming back again. He shot into his 
cabin like a rabbit into its burrow, just in time 
to escape that shouting terror. 

He shut the door, waited until the passage was 
still, then went across to the window and looked 
out. A drift of cloud made the prospect of the 
streets and squares hazy, and the rolling of the 
airship swung the picture up and down. A few 
people were running to and fro, but for the most 
part the aspect of the district was desertion. 
The streets seemed to broaden out, they became 
clearer, and the little dots that were people larger 
as the Vaterland came down again. Presently 
she was swaying along above the lower end of 
Broadway. The dots below, Bert saw, were not 
running now, but standing and looking up. 
Then suddenly they were all running again. 

Something had dropped from the aeroplane, 
something that looked small and flimsy. It 
hit the pavement near a big archway just under- 
neath Bert. A little man was sprinting along 
the sidewalk within half a dozen yards, and two 
or three others and one woman were bolting 
across the roadway. They were odd little figures, 
so very small were they about the heads, so very 
active about the elbows and legs. It was really 
funny to see their legs going. Foreshortened 
humanity has no dignity. The little man on the 
pavement jumped comically — no doubt with 
terror, as the bomb fell beside him. 

Then blinding flames squirted out in all direc- 
tions from the point of impact, and the little 
p 


210 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


man who had jumped became, for an instant, 
a flash of fire and vanished — vanished ab- 
solutely. The people running out into the road 
took preposterous clumsy leaps, then flopped 
down and lay still, with their torn clothes smoul- 
dering into flame. Then pieces of the archway 
began to drop, and the lower masonry of the 
building to fall in with the rumbling sound of 
coals being shot into a cellar. A faint screaming 
reached Bert, and then a crowd of people ran out 
into the street, one man limping and gesticulat- 
ing awkwardly. He halted, and went back 
towards the building. A falling mass of brick- 
work hit him and sent him sprawling to lie still 
and crumpled where he fell. Dust and black 
smoke came pouring into the street, and were 
presently shot with red flame. . . . 

In this manner the massacre of New York 
began. She was the first of the great cities of 
the Scientific Age to suffer by the enormous 
powers and grotesque limitations of aerial war- 
fare. She was wrecked as in the previous century 
endless barbaric cities had been bombarded, 
because she was at once too strong to be occupied 
and too undisciplined and proud to surrender 
in order to escape destruction. Given the cir- 
cumstances, the thing had to be done. It was 
impossible for the Prince to desist, and own him- 
self defeated, and it was impossible to subdue 
the city except by largely destroying it. The 
catastrophe was the logical outcome of the situ- 
ation, created, by the application of science to 
warfare. It was unavoidable that great cities 


HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK 211 


should be destroyed. In spite of his intense ex- 
asperation with his dilemma, the Prince sought 
to be moderate even in massacre. He tried to 
give a memorable lesson with the minimum 
waste of life and the minimum expenditure of 
explosives. For that night he proposed only the 
wrecking of Broadway. He directed the air- 
fleet to move in column over the route of this 
thoroughfare, dropping bombs, the Vaterland 
leading. And so our Bert Smallways became 
a participant in one of the most cold-blooded 
slaughters in the world's history, in which men 
who were neither excited nor, except for the 
remotest chance of a bullet, in any danger, poured 
death and destruction upon homes and crowds 
below. 

He clung to the frame of the porthole as the 
airship tossed and swayed, and stared down 
through the light rain that now drove before the 
wind, into the twilight streets, watching people 
running out of the houses, watching buildings 
collapse and fires begin. As the airships sailed 
along they smashed up the city as a child will 
shatter its cities of brick and card. Below, they 
left ruins and blazing conflagrations and heaped 
and scattered dead; men, women, and children 
mixed together as though they had been no more 
than Moors, or Zulus, or Chinese. Lower New 
York was soon a furnace of crimson flames, from 
which there was no escape. Cars, railways, 
ferries, all had ceased, and never a light lit the 
way of the distracted fugitives in that dusky 
confusion but the light of burning. He had 


212 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


glimpses of what it must mean to be down there 
— glimpses. And it came to him suddenly as 
an incredible discovery, that such disasters were 
not only possible now in this strange, gigantic, 
foreign New York, but also in London — in 
Bun Hill ! that the little island in the silver seas 
was at the end of its immunity, that nowhere in 
the world any more was there a place left where 
a Smallways might lift his head proudly and 
vote for war and a spirited foreign policy, and 
go secure from such horrible things. 


CHAPTER VII 

THE “VATERLAND” IS DISABLED 

§ 1 

And then above the flames of Manhattan Island 
came a battle, the first battle in the air. The 
Americans had realised the price their waiting 
game must cost, and struck with all the strength 
they had, if haply they might still save New York 
from this mad Prince of Blood and Iron, and from 
fire and death. 

They came down upon the Germans on the wings 
of a great gale in the twilight, amidst thunder 
and rain. They came from the yards of Wash- 
ington and Philadelphia, full tilt in two squadrons, 
and but for one sentinel airship hard by Trenton, 
the surprise would have been complete. 

The Germans, sick and weary with destruction, 
and half empty of ammunition, were facing up 
into the weather when the news of this onset 
reached them. New York they had left behind 
to the south-eastward, a darkened city with one 
hideous red scar of flames. All the airships 
rolled and staggered, bursts of hailstorm bore 
them down and forced them to fight their way up 
again; the air had become bitterly cold. The 
Prince was on the point of issuing orders to drop 
213 


214 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


earthward and trail copper lightning chains when 
the news of the aeroplane attack came to him. 
He faced his fleet in line abreast south, had the 
drachenflieger manned and held ready to cast 
loose, and ordered a general ascent into the freez- 
ing clearness above the wet and darkness. 

The news of what was imminent came slowly 
to Bert’s perceptions. He was standing in the 
messroom at the time and the evening rations 
were being served out. He had resumed But- 
teridge’s coat and gloves, and in addition he had 
wrapped his blanket about him. He was dipping 
his bread into his soup and was biting off big 
mouthfuls. His legs were wide apart, and he 
leant against the partition in order to steady him- 
self amidst the pitching and oscillation of the 
airship. The men about him looked tired and 
depressed; a few talked, but most were sullen 
and thoughtful, and one or two were air-sick. 
They all seemed to share the peculiarly outcast 
feeling that had followed the murders of the 
evening, a sense of a land beneath them, and an 
outraged humanity grown more hostile than the 
sea. 

Then the news lit them. A red-faced sturdy 
man, a man with light eyelashes and a scar, ap- 
peared in the doorway and shouted something 
in German that manifestly startled every one. 
Bert felt the shock of the altered tone, though 
he could not understand a word that was said. 
The announcement was followed by a pause, 
and then a great outcry of questions and sug- 
gestions. Even the air-sick men flushed and 


THE “VATERLAND” IS DISABLED 215 


spoke. For some minutes the mess-room was 
Bedlam, and then, as if it were a confirmation of 
the news, came the shrill ringing of the bells 
that called the men to their posts. 

Bert with pantomime suddenness found himself 
alone. 

u What’s up ? ” he said, though he partly guessed. 

He stayed only to gulp down the remainder of 
his soup, and then ran along the swaying passage 
and, clutching tightly, down the ladder to the 
little gallery. The weather hit him like cold 
water squirted from a hose. The airship engaged 
in some new feat of atmospheric Jiu-Jitsu. He 
drew his blanket closer about him, clutching with 
one straining hand. He found himself tossing 
in a wet twilight, with nothing to be seen but 
mist pouring past him. Above him the airship 
was warm with lights and busy with the move- 
ments of men going to their quarters. Then 
abruptly the lights went out, and the Vaterland 
with bounds and twists and strange writhings 
was fighting her way up the air. 

He had a glimpse, as the Vaterland rolled over, 
of some large buildings burning close below them, 
a quivering acanthus of flames, and then he saw 
indistinctly through the driving weather another 
airship wallowing along like a porpoise, and also 
working up. Presently the clouds swallowed her 
again for a time, and then she came back to sight 
as a dark and whale-like monster, amidst stream- 
ing weather. The air was full of flappings and 
pipings, of void, gusty shouts and noises; it 
buffeted him and confused him; ever and again 


216 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


his attention became rigid — a blind and deaf 
balancing and clutching. 

“Wow!” 

Something fell past him out of the vast dark- 
nesses above and vanished into the tumults below, 
going obliquely downward. It was a German 
drachenflieger. The thing was going so fast 
he had but an instant apprehension of the dark 
figure of the aeronaut crouched together clutch- 
ing at his wheel. It might be a manoeuvre, but 
it looked like a catastrophe. 

“Gaw!” said Bert. 

“Pup-pup-pup,” went a gun somewhere in the 
mirk ahead, and suddenly and quite horribly the 
Vaterland lurched, and Bert and the sentinel were 
clinging to the rail for dear life. “Bang!” came 
a vast impact out of the zenith, followed by an- 
other huge roll, and all about him the tumbled 
clouds flashed red and lurid in response to flashes 
unseen, revealing immense gulfs. The rail went 
right overhead, and he was hanging loose in the 
air holding on to it. 

For a time Bert’s whole mind and being was 
given to clutching. “I’m going into the cabin,” 
he said, as the airship righted again and brought 
back the gallery floor to his feet. He began to 
make his way cautiously towards the ladder. 
“Whee — wow!” he cried as the whole gallery 
reared itself up forward, and then plunged down 
like a desperate horse. 

Crack ! Bang ! Bang ! Bang ! And then 
hard upon this little rattle of shots and bombs 
came, all about him, enveloping him, engulfing 


THE “ VATERLAND ” IS DISABLED 217 


him, immense and overwhelming, a quivering 
white blaze of lightning and a thunder-clap that 
was like the bursting of a world. 

Just for the instant before that explosion the 
universe seemed to be standing still in a shadow- 
less glare. 

It was then he saw the American aeroplane. 
He saw it in the light of the flash as a thing al- 
together motionless. Even its screw appeared 
still, and its men were rigid dolls. (For it was 
so near he could see the men upon it quite dis- 
tinctly.) Its stern was tilting down, and the 
whole machine was heeling over. It was of the 
| Colt-Coburn-Langley pattern, with double up- 
tilted wings and the screw ahead, and the men 
were in a boat-like body netted over. From this 
very light long body, magazine guns projected 
on either side. One thing that was strikingly 
odd and wonderful in that moment of revelation 
was that the left upper wing was burning down- 
ward with a reddish, smoky flame. But this 
was not the most wonderful thing about this 
apparition. The most wonderful thing was that 
if and a German airship five hundred yards 
below were threaded as it were on the lightning 
flash, which turned out of its path as if to take 
them, and that out from the corners and pro- 
jecting points of its huge wings everywhere, little 
branching thorn-trees of lightning were streaming. 

Like a picture Bert saw these things, a picture 
a little blurred by a thin veil of wind-torn mist. 

The crash of the thunder-clap followed the flash 
and seemed a part of it, so that it is hard to say 


218 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


whether Bert was the rather deafened or blinded 
in that instant. 

And then darkness, utter darkness, and a heavy 
report and a thin small sound of voices that went 
wailing downward into the abyss below. 

§ 2 

There followed upon these things a long, deep 
swaying of the airship, and then Bert began a 
struggle to get back to his cabin. He was drenched 
and cold and terrified beyond measure, and now 
more than a little air-sick. It seemed to him 
that the strength had gone out of his knees and 
hands, and that his feet had become icily slippery 
over the metal they trod upon. But that was 
because a thin film of ice had frozen upon the 
gallery. 

He never knew how long his ascent of the 
ladder back into the airship took him, but in 
his dreams afterwards, when he recalled it, that 
experience seemed to last for hours. Bejow, 
above, around him were gulfs, monstrous gulfs 
of howling wind and eddies of dark, whirling 
snowflakes, and he was protected from it all by 
a little metal grating and a rail, a grating and 
rail that seemed madly infuriated with him, 
passionately eager to wrench him off and throw 
him into the tumult of space. 

Once he had a fancy that a bullet tore by his 
ear, and that the clouds and snowflakes were lit 
by a flash, but he never even turned his head to 
see what new assailant whirled past them in the 


THE “VATERLAND” IS DISABLED 219 


void. He wanted to get into the passage ! He 
wanted to get into the passage ! He wanted to 
get into the passage ! Would the arm by which 
he was clinging hold out, or would it give way 
and snap? A handful of hail smacked him in 
the face, so that for a time he was breathless 
and nearly insensible. Hold tight, Bert ! He 
renewed his efforts. 

He found himself, with an enormous sense of 
relief and warmth, in the passage. The passage 
was behaving like a dice-box, its disposition was 
evidently to rattle him about and then throw 
him out again. He hung on with the convulsive 
clutch of instinct until the passage lurched down 
ahead. Then he would make a short run cabin- 
ward, and clutch again as the fore-end rose. 

Behold ! He was in the cabin ! 

He snapped-to the door, and for a time he was 
not a human being, he was a case of air-sickness. 
He wanted to get somewhere that would fix him, 
that he needn’t clutch. He opened the locker 
and got inside among the loose articles, and 
sprawled there helplessly, with his head sometimes 
bumping one side and sometimes the other. The 
lid shut upon him with a click. He did not care 
then what was happening any more. He did 
not care who fought who, or what bullets were 
fired or explosions occurred. He did not care if 
presently he was shot or smashed to pieces. He 
was full of feeble, inarticulate rage and despair. 
“Foolery!” he said, his one exhaustive comment 
on human enterprise, adventure, war, and the 
chapter of accidents that had entangled him. 


220 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


“Foolery! Ugh!” He included the order of 
the universe in that comprehensive condemnation. 
He wished he was dead. 

He saw nothing of the stars, as presently the 
Vaterland cleared the rush and confusion of the 
lower weather, nor of the duel she fought with 
two circling aeroplanes, how they shot her rear- 
most chambers through, and how she fought 
them off with explosive bullets and turned to 
run as she did so. 

The rush and swoop of these wonderful night 
birds was all lost upon him; their heroic dash 
and self-sacrifice. The Vaterland was rammed, 
and for some moments she hung on the verge 
of destruction, and sinking swiftly, with the 
American aeroplane entangled with her smashed 
propeller, and the Americans trying to scramble 
aboard. It signified nothing to Bert. To him 
it conveyed itself simply as vehement swaying. 
Foolery ! When the American airship dropped 
off at last, with most of its crew shot or fallen, 
Bert in his locker appreciated nothing but that 
the Vaterland had taken a hideous upward leap. 

But then came infinite relief, incredibly blissful 
relief. The rolling, the pitching, the struggle 
ceased, ceased instantly and absolutely. The 
Vaterland was no longer fighting the gale; her 
smashed and exploded engines throbbed no more ; 
she was disabled and driving before the wind as 
smoothly as a balloon, a huge, windspread, 
tattered cloud of aerial wreckage. 

To Bert it was no more than the end of a series 
of disagreeable sensations. He was not curious 





wM 


i 




“ She came down in a collapsing heap 














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THE “VATERLAND” IS DISABLED 221 


to know what had happened to the airship, nor 
what had happened to the battle. For a long 
time he lay waiting apprehensively for the pitch- 
ing and tossing and his qualms to return, and so 
lying, boxed up in the locker, he presently fell 
asleep. 

§ 3 

He awoke tranquil but very stuffy, and at the 
same time very cold, and quite unable to recollect 
where he could be. His head ached, and his 
breath was suffocated. He had been dreaming 
confusedly of Edna, and desert dervishes, and 
of riding bicycles in an extremely perilous manner 
through the upper air amidst a pyrotechnic display 
of crackers and Bengal lights — to the great 
annoyance of a sort of composite person made up 
of the Prince and Mr. Butteridge. Then for some 
reason Edna and he had begun to cry pitifully 
for each other, and he woke up with wet eye- 
lashes into this ill-ventilated darkness of the 
locker. He would never see Edna any more, 
never see Edna any more. 

He thought he must be back in the bedroom 
behind the cycle shop at the bottom of Bun Hill, 
and he was sure the vision he had had of the 
destruction of a magnificent city, a city quite 
incredibly great and splendid, by means of bombs, 
was no more than a particularly vivid dream. 

“Grubb !” he called, anxious to tell him. 

The answering silence, and the dull resonance 
of the locker to his voice, supplementing the 


222 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


stifling quality of the air, set going a new train 
of ideas. He lifted up his hands and feet, 
and met an inflexible resistance. He was in a 
coffin, he thought ! He had been buried alive ! 
He gave way at once to wild panic. “'Elp!” 
he screamed. “’Elp!” and drummed with his 
feet, and kicked and struggled. “Let me out! 
Let me out!” 

For some seconds he struggled with this in- 
tolerable horror, and then the side of his imagined 
coffin gave way, and he was flying out into day- 
light. Then he was rolling about on what seemed 
to be a padded floor with Kurt, and being punched 
and sworn at lustily. 

He sat up. His head bandage had become 
loose and got over one eye, and he whipped the 
whole thing off. Kurt was also sitting up, a yard 
away from him, pink as ever, wrapped in blankets, 
and with an aluminium divert helmet over his 
knee, staring at him with a severe expression, 
and rubbing his downy unshaven chin. They 
were both on a slanting floor of crimson padding, 
and above them was an opening like a long, low 
cellar flap that Bert by an effort perceived to be 
the cabin door in a half-inverted condition. The 
whole cabin had in fact turned on its side. 

“What the deuce do you mean by it, Small- 
ways?” said Kurt, “jumping out of that locker 
when I was certain you had gone overboard with 
the rest of them? Where have you been?” 

“What's up?” asked Bert. 

“This end of the airship is up. Most other 
things are down.” 


THE “ VATERLAND ” IS DISABLED 223 


"Was there a battle?” 

“There was.” 

“Who won?” 

“I haven't seen the papers, Smallways. We 
left before the finish. We got disabled and un- 
manageable, and our colleagues — consorts I 
mean — were too busy most of them to trouble 
about us, and the wind blew us — Heaven knows 
where the wind is blowing us. It blew us right 
out of action at the rate of eighty miles an hour 
or so. Gott ! what a wind that was ! What a 
fight! And here we are!” 

“Where ?” 

“In the air, Smallways — in the air! When 
we get down on the earth again we shan’t know 
what to do with our legs.” 

“But what’s below us?” 

“Canada, to the best of my knowledge — and a 
jolly bleak, empty, inhospitable country it looks.” 

“But why ain’t we right ways up?” 

Kurt made no answer for a space. 

“Last I remember was seeing a sort of flying- 
machine in a lightning flash,” said Bert. “Gaw! 
that was ’orrible. Guns going off! Things ex- 
plodin’ ! Clouds and ’ail. Pitching and tossing. 
I got so scared and desperate — and sick. . . . 
You don’t know how the fight came off?” 

“Not a bit of it. I was up with my squad in 
those divers’ dresses, inside the gas-chambers, 
with sheets of silk for caulking. We couldn’t 
see a thing outside except the lightning flashes. 
I never saw one of those American aeroplanes. 
Just saw the shots flicker through the chambers 


224 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


and sent off men for the tears. We caught fire a 
bit — not much, you know. We were too wet, 
so the fires spluttered out before we banged. 
And then one of their infernal things dropped out 
of the air on us and rammed. Didn’t you feel 
it?” 

“I felt everything,” said Bert. “I didn’t 
notice any particular smash ” 

“They must have been pretty desperate if they 
meant it. They slashed down on us like a knife ; 
simply ripped the after gas-chambers like gutting 
herrings, crumpled up the engines and screw. 
Most of the engines dropped off as they fell off 
us, or we’d have grounded — but the rest is sort 
of dangling. We just turned up our nose to the 
heavens and stayed there. Eleven men rolled 
off us from various points, and poor old Winter- 
feld fell through the door of the Prince’s cabin 
into the chart-room and broke his ankle. Also 
we got our electric gear shot or carried away — 
no one knows how. That’s the position, Small- 
ways. We’re driving through the air like a com- 
mon aerostat, at the mercy of the elements, al- 
most due north — probably to the North Pole. 
We don’t know what aeroplanes the Americans 
have, or anything at all about it. Very likely 
we have finished ’em up. One fouled us, one was 
struck by lightning, some of the men saw a third 
upset, apparently just for fun. They were going 
cheap anyhow. Also we’ve lost most of our 
drachenflieger. They just skated off into the 
night. No stability in ’em. That’s all. We 
don’t know if we’ve won or lost. We don’t know 



The chances of battle and the weather had conspired to maroon him in labrador 


























































































































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THE “VATERLAND” IS DISABLED 225 


if we’re at war with the British Empire yet or at 
peace. Consequently, we daren’t get down. We 
don’t know what we are up to or what we are go- 
ing to do. Our Napoleon is alone, forward, and 
I suppose he’s rearranging his plans. Whether 
New York was our Moscow or not remains to be 
seen. We’ve had a high old time and murdered 
no end of people! War! Noble war! I’m sick 
of it this morning. I like sitting in rooms right- 
way up and not on slippery partitions. I’m a 
civilised man. I keep thinking of old Albrecht 
and the Barbarossa. ... I feel I want a wash 
and kind words and a quiet home. When I look 
at you, I know I want a wash. Gott!” — he 
stifled a vehement yawn — “What a Cockney 
tadpole of a ruffian you look!” 

“Can we get any grub?” asked Bert. 

“Heaven knows!” said Kurt. 

He meditated upon Bert for a time. “So far 
as I can judge, Smallways,” he said, “the Prince 
will probably want to throw you overboard — 
next time he thinks of you. He certainly will 
if he sees you. . . . After all, you know, you 
came als Ballast. . . . And we shall have to 
lighten ship extensively pretty soon. Unless I’m 
mistaken, the Prince will wake up presently 
and start doing things with tremendous vigour. 
. . . I’ve taken a fancy to you. It’s the Eng- 
lish strain in me. You’re a rum little chap. I 
shan’t like seeing you whizz down the air. . . . 
You’d better make yourself useful, Smallways. I 
think I shall requisition you for my squad. 
You’ll have to work, you know, and be infernally 

Q 


226 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


intelligent, and all that. And you’ll have to hang 
about upside down a bit. Still, it’s the best 
chance you have. We shan’t carry passengers 
much farther this trip, I fancy. Ballast goes over- 
board — if we don’t want to ground precious 
soon and be taken prisoners of war. The Prince 
won’t do that anyhow. He’ll be game to the last.” 

§ 4 

By means of a folding chair, which was still in its 
place behind the door, they got to the window and 
looked out in turn and contemplated a sparsely 
wooded country below, with no railways nor 
roads, and only occasional signs of habitation. 
Then a bugle sounded, and Kurt interpreted it 
as a summons to food. They got through the 
door and clambered with some difficulty up the 
nearly vertical passage, holding on desperately 
with toes and finger-tips, to the ventilating per- 
forations in its floor. The mess stewards had 
found their fireless heating arrangements intact, 
and there was hot cocoa for the officers and hot 
soup for the men. 

Bert’s sense of the queerness of this experience 
was so keen that it blotted out any fear he might 
have felt. Indeed, he was far more interested 
now than afraid. He seemed to have touched 
down to the bottom of fear and abandonment 
overnight. He was growing accustomed to the 
idea that he would probably be killed presently, 
that this strange voyage in the air was in all 
probability his death journey. No human being 


THE “ VATERLAND ” IS DISABLED 227 


can keep permanently afraid: fear goes at last 
to the back of one's mind, accepted, and shelved, 
and done with. He squatted over his soup, 
sopping it up with his bread, and contemplated 
his comrades. They were all rather yellow and 
dirty, with four-day beards, and they grouped 
themselves in the tired, unpremeditated manner 
of men on a wreck. They talked little. The 
situation perplexed them beyond any suggestion 
of ideas. Three had been hurt in the pitching up 
of the ship during the fight, and one had a ban- 
daged bullet wound. It was incredible that this 
little band of men had committed murder and 
massacre on a scale beyond precedent. None of 
them who squatted on the sloping gas-padded 
partition, soup mug in hand, seemed really guilty 
of anything of the sort, seemed really capable 
of hurting a dog wantonly. They were all so 
manifestly built for homely chalets on the solid 
earth and carefully tilled fields and blond wives 
and cheery merrymaking. The red-faced, sturdy 
man with light eyelashes who had brought the 
first news of the air battle to the men's mess had 
finished his soup, and with an expression of ma- 
ternal solicitude was readjusting the bandages of 
a youngster whose arm had been sprained. 

Bert was crumbling the last of his bread into 
the last of his soup, eking it out as long as possible, 
when suddenly he became aware that every one 
was looking at a pair of feet that were dangling 
across the downturned open doorway. Kurt 
appeared and squatted across the hinge. In 
some mysterious way he had shaved his face and 


228 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


smoothed down his light golden hair. He looked 
extraordinarily cherubic. “Der Prinz,” he said. 

A second pair of boots followed, making wide 
and magnificent gestures in their attempts to 
feel the door frame. Kurt guided them to a 
foothold, and the Prince, shaved and brushed 
and beeswaxed and clean and big and terrible, 
slid down into position astride of the door. All 
the men and Bert also stood up and saluted. 

The Prince surveyed them with the gesture of a 
man who sits a steed. The head of the Kapitan 
appeared beside him. 

Then Bert had a terrible moment. The blue 
blaze of the Prince’s eye fell upon him, the great 
finger pointed, a question was asked. Kurt 
intervened with explanations. 

“So,” said the Prince, and Bert was disposed of. 

Then the Prince addressed the men in short, 
heroic sentences, steadying himself on the hinge 
with one hand and waving the other in a fine 
variety of gesture. What he said Bert could not 
tell, but he perceived that their demeanour 
changed, their backs stiffened. They began to 
punctuate the Prince’s discourse with cries of 
approval. At the end their leader burst into 
song and all the men with him. “Ein feste Burg 
ist unser Gott,” they chanted in deep, strong 
tones, with an immense moral uplifting. It 
was glaringly inappropriate in a damaged, half- 
overturned, and sinking airship, which had been 
disabled and blown out of action after inflicting 
the cruellest bombardment in the world’s history ; 
but it was immensely stirring nevertheless. Bert 


THE “VATERLAND” IS DISABLED 229 


was deeply moved. He could not sing any of 
the words of Luther’s great hymn, but he opened 
his mouth and emitted loud, deep, and partially 
harmonious notes. . . . 

Far below, this deep chanting struck on the 
ears of a little camp of Christianised half-breeds 
who were lumbering. They were breakfasting, 
but they rushed out cheerfully, quite prepared 
for the Second Advent. They stared at the 
shattered and twisted V aterland driving before 
the gale, amazed beyond words. In so many 
respects it was like their idea of the Second 
Advent, and then again in so many respects it 
wasn’t. They stared at its passage, awe-stricken 
and perplexed beyond their power of words. 
The hymn ceased. Then after a long interval 
a voice came out of heaven. “Vat id diss blace 
here galled itself; vat?” 

They made no answer. Indeed they did not 
understand, though the question repeated itself. 

And at last the monster drove away northward 
over a crest of pine woods and was no more seen. 
They fell into a hot and long disputation. . . . 

The hymn ended. The Prince’s legs dangled up 
the passage again, and every one was briskly 
prepared for heroic exertion and triumphant acts. 
“ Small ways!” cried Kurt, “come here!” 

§ 5 

Then Bert, under Kurt’s direction, had his first 
experience of the work of an air-sailor. 

The immediate task before the captain of the 


230 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


Vaterland was a very simple one. He had to keep 
afloat. The wind, though it had fallen from its 
earlier violence, was still blowing strongly enough 
to render the grounding of so clumsy a mass 
extremely dangerous, even if it had been desirable 
for the Prince to land in inhabited country, and 
so risk capture. It was necessary to keep the 
airship up until the wind fell and then, if possible, 
to descend in some lonely district of the Territory 
where there would be a chance of repair or rescue 
by some searching consort. In order to do this 
weight had to be dropped, and Kurt was detailed 
with a dozen men to climb down among the wreck- 
age of the deflated air-chambers and cut the 
stuff clear, portion by portion, as the airship sank. 
So Bert, armed with a sharp cutlass, found him- 
self clambering about upon netting four thousand 
feet up in the air, trying to understand Kurt when 
he spoke in English and to divine him when he 
used German. 

It was giddy work, but not nearly so giddy as a 
rather overnourished reader sitting in a warm 
room might imagine. Bert found it quite possible 
to look down and contemplate the wild sub-arctic 
landscape below, now devoid of any sign of habita- 
tion, a land of rocky cliffs and cascades and broad 
swirling desolate rivers, and of trees and thickets 
that grew more stunted and scrubby as the day 
wore on. Here and there on the hills were patches 
and pockets of snow. And over all this he worked, 
hacking away at the tough and slippery oiled 
silk and clinging stoutly to the netting. Pres- 
ently they cleared and dropped a tangle of bent 


THE “VATERLAND” IS DISABLED 231 


steel rods and wires from the frame, and a big 
chunk of silk bladder. That was trying. The 
airship flew up at once as this loose hamper 
parted. It seemed almost as though they were 
dropping all Canada. The stuff spread out in 
the air and floated down and hit and twisted up 
in a nasty fashion on the lip of a gorge. Bert 
clung like a frozen monkey to his ropes and did 
not move a muscle for five minutes. 

But there was something very exhilarating, he 
found, in this dangerous work, and above every- 
thing else, there was the sense of fellowship. He 
was no longer an isolated and distrustful stranger 
among these others, he had now a common object 
with them, he worked with a friendly rivalry to 
get through with his share before them. And he 
developed a great respect and affection for Kurt, 
which had hitherto been only latent in him. 
Kurt with a job to direct was altogether admi- 
rable; he was resourceful, helpful, considerate, 
swift. He seemed to be everywhere. One for- 
got his pinkness, his light cheerfulness of manner. 
Directly one had trouble he was at hand with 
sound and confident advice. He was like an 
elder brother to his men. 

All together they cleared three considerable 
chunks of wreckage, and then Bert was glad to 
clamber up into the cabins again and give place 
to a second squad. He and his companions were 
given hot coffee, and indeed, even gloved as they 
were, the job had been a cold one. They sat 
drinking it and regarding each other with satis- 
faction. One man spoke to Bert amiably in 


232 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


German, and Bert nodded and smiled. Through 
Kurt, Bert, whose ankles were almost frozen, 
succeeded in getting a pair of top-boots from one 
of the disabled men. 

In the afternoon the wind abated greatly, and 
small, infrequent snowflakes came drifting by. 
Snow also spread more abundantly below, and 
the only trees were clumps of pine and spruce 
in the lower valleys. Kurt went with three men 
into the still intact gas-chambers, let out a certain 
quantity of gas from them, and prepared a series 
of ripping panels for the descent. Also the residue 
of the bombs and explosives in the magazine were 
thrown overboard and fell, detonating loudly, 
in the wilderness below. And about four o’clock 
in the afternoon, upon a wide and rocky plain 
within sight of snow-crested cliffs, the V aterland 
ripped and grounded. 

It was necessarily a difficult and violent affair, 
for the V aterland had not been planned for the 
necessities of a balloon. The captain got one panel 
ripped too soon and the others not soon enough. 
She dropped heavily, bounced clumsily, and 
smashed the hanging gallery into the fore-part, 
mortally injuring Von Winterfeld, and then came 
down in a collapsing heap after dragging for some 
moments. The forward shield and its machine 
gun tumbled in upon the things below. Two 
men were hurt badly — one got a broken leg 
and one was internally injured — by flying rods 
and wires, and Bert was pinned for a time under 
the side. When at last he got clear and could 
take a view of the situation, the great black eagle 


THE “ VATERLAND ” IS DISABLED 233 


that had started so splendidly from Franconia 
six evenings ago, sprawled deflated over the cabins 
of the airship and the frost-bitten rocks of this 
desolate place and looked a most unfortunate 
bird — as though some one had caught it and 
wrung its neck and cast it aside. Several of the 
crew of the airship were standing about in silence, 
contemplating the wreckage and the empty 
wilderness into which they had fallen. Others 
were busy under the impromptu tent made by 
the empty gas-chambers. The Prince had gone 
a little way off and was scrutinising the distant 
heights through his field-glass. They had the 
appearance of old sea cliffs; here and there were 
small clumps of conifers, and in two places tall 
cascades. The nearer ground was strewn with 
glaciated boulders and supported nothing but a 
stunted Alpine vegetation of compact clustering 
stems and stalkless flowers. No river was visible, 
but the air was full of the rush and babble of a 
torrent close at hand. A bleak and biting wind 
was blowing. Ever and again a snowflake drifted 
past. The springless frozen earth under Bert’s 
feet felt strangely dead and heavy after the buoy-: 
ant airship. 

§ 6 

So it came about that that great and powerful 
Prince Karl Albert was for a time thrust out of the 
stupendous conflict he chiefly had been instru- 
mental in provoking. The chances of battle and 
the weather conspired to maroon him in Labrador, 
and there he raged for six long days, while war 


234 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


and wonder swept the world. Nation rose against 
nation and air-fleet grappled air-fleet, cities blazed 
and men died in multitudes; but in Labrador 
one might have dreamt that, except for a little 
noise of hammering, the world was at peace. 

There the encampment lay ; from a distance the 
cabins, covered over with the silk of the balloon 
part, looked like a gipsy’s tent on a rather excep- 
tional scale, and all the available hands were 
busy in building out of the steel of the framework 
a mast from which the Vaterland’s electricians 
might hang the long conductors of the apparatus 
for wireless telegraphy that was to link the Prince 
to the world again. There were times when it 
seemed they would never rig that mast. From 
the outset the party suffered hardship. They 
were not too abundantly provisioned, and they 
were put on short rations, and for all the thick 
garments they had, they were but ill-equipped 
against the piercing wind and inhospitable vio- 
lence of this wilderness. The first night was 
spent in darkness and without fires. The engines 
that had supplied power were smashed and 
dropped far away to the south, and there was 
never a match among the company. It had been 
death to carry matches. All the explosives had 
been thrown out of the magazine, and it was only 
towards morning that the bird-faced man whose 
cabin Bert had taken in the beginning confessed 
to a brace of duelling pistols and cartridges, with 
which a fire could be started. Afterwards the 
lockers of the machine gun were found to contain 
a supply of unused ammunition. 


THE “VATERLAND” IS DISABLED 235 


The night was a distressing one and seemed 
almost interminable. Hardly any one slept. 
There were seven wounded men aboard, and Von 
Winterfeld’s head had been injured, and he was 
shivering and in delirium, struggling with his 
attendant and shouting strange things about the 
burning of New York. The men crept together in 
the mess-room in the darkling, wrapped in what 
they could find, and drank cocoa from the fireless 
heaters and listened to his cries. In the morning 
the Prince made them a speech about Destiny, 
and the God of his Fathers and the pleasure and 
glory of giving one's life for his dynasty, and a 
number of similar considerations that might 
otherwise have been neglected in that bleak 
wilderness. The men cheered without enthu- 
siasm, and far away a wolf howled. 

Then they set to work, and for a week they 
toiled to put up a mast of steel, and hang from it 
a gridiron of copper wires two hundred feet by 
twelve. The theme of all that time was work, 
work continually, straining and toilsome work, 
and all the rest was grim hardship and evil chances, 
save for a certain wild splendour in the sunset 
and sunrise, in the torrents and drifting weather, 
in the wilderness about them. They built and 
tended a ring of perpetual fires, gangs roamed 
for brushwood and met with wolves, and the 
wounded men and their beds were brought out 
from the airship cabins, and put in shelters about 
the fires. There old Von Winterfeld raved and 
became quiet and presently died, and three of the 
other wounded sickened for want of good food, 


236 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


while their fellows mended. These things hap- 
pened, as it were, in the wings; the central facts 
before Bert’s consciousness were always firstly 
the perpetual toil, the holding and lifting, and 
lugging at heavy and clumsy masses, the tedious 
filing and winding of wires, and secondly, the 
Prince, urgent and threatening whenever a man 
relaxed. He would stand over them and point 
over their heads, southward into the empty sky. 
“The world there,” he said in German, “is wait- 
ing for us ! Fifty Centuries come to their Consum- 
mation.” Bert did not understand the words, 
but he read the gesture. Several times the Prince 
grew angry; once with a man who was working 
slowly, once with a man who stole a comrade’s 
ration. The first he scolded and set to a more 
tedious task; the second he struck in the face 
and ill-used. He did no work himself. There 
was a clear space near the fires, in which he would 
walk up and down, sometimes for two hours 
together, with arms folded, muttering to himself 
of Patience and his destiny. At times these 
mutterings broke out into rhetoric, into shouts 
and gestures that would arrest the workers ; they 
would stare at him until they perceived that his 
blue eyes glared and his waving hand addressed 
itself always to the southward hills. On Sunday 
the work ceased for half an hour, and the Prince 
preached on faith and God’s friendship for David, 
and afterwards they all sang: “Ein feste Burg 
ist unser Gott.” 

In an improvised hovel lay Von Winterfeld, 
and all one morning he raved of the greatness of 


THE “ VATERLAND ” IS DISABLED 237 


Germany. “Blut und Eisen!” he shouted, and 
then, as if in derision, “ Welt-Politik — ha, ha!” 
Then he would explain complicated questions of 
polity to imaginary hearers, in low, wily tones. 
The other sick men kept still, listening to him. 
Bert’s distracted attention would be recalled by 
Kurt. “Smallways, take that end. So!” 

Slowly, tediously, the great mast was rigged, 
and hoisted foot by foot into place. The elec- 
tricians had contrived a catchment pool and a 
wheel in the torrent close at hand — for the little 
Mulhausen dynamo with its turbinal volute used 
by the telegraphists was quite adaptable to water 
driving, and on the sixth day in the evening the 
apparatus was in working order and the Prince 
was calling — weakly, indeed, but calling — to 
his air-fleet across the empty spaces of the world. 
For a time he called unheeded. 

The effect of that evening was to linger long in 
Bert’s memory. A red fire spluttered and blazed 
close by the electricians at their work, and red 
gleams ran up the vertical steel mast and threads 
of copper wire towards the zenith. The Prince 
sat on a rock close by, with his chin on his hand, 
waiting. Beyond and to the northward was the 
cairn that covered Von Winterfeld, surmounted 
by a cross of steel, and from among the tumbled 
rocks in the distance the eyes of a wolf gleamed 
redly. On the other hand was the wreckage of the 
great airship and the men bivouacked about a 
second ruddy flare. They were all keeping very 
still, as if waiting to hear what news might pres- 
ently be given them. Far away, across many 


238 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


hundreds of miles of desolation, other wireless 
masts would be clicking, and snapping, and wak- 
ing into responsive vibration. Perhaps they 
were not. Perhaps those throbs upon the ether 
wasted themselves upon a regardless world. 
When the men spoke, they spoke in low tones. 
Now and then a bird shrieked remotely, and once 
a wolf howled. All these things were set in the 
immense cold spaciousness of the wild. 

§ 7 

Bert got the news last, and chiefly in broken 
English, from a linguist among his mates. It 
was only far on in the night that the weary teleg- 
raphist got an answer to his calls, but then the 
messages came clear and strong. And such news 
it was ! 

“I say,” said Bert at his breakfast, amidst a 
great clamour, “tell us a bit.” 

“All de vorlt is at vor!” said the linguist, 
waving his cocoa in an illustrative manner, “all 
de vorlt is at vor!” 

Bert stared southward into the dawn. It did 
not seem so. 

“All de vorlt is at vor ! They haf burn’ Berlin ; 
they haf burn’ London ; they haf burn’ Hamburg 
and Paris. Chapan hass burn San Francisco. 
We haf mate a camp at Niagara. Dat is whad 
they are telling us. China has cot drachenflieger 
and luftschiffe beyont counting. All de vorlt is 
at vor!” 

“Gaw!” said Bert. 


THE “VATERLAND” IS DISABLED 239 


“Yess,” said the linguist, drinking his cocoa. 

“ Burnt up London, ’ave they? Like we did 
New York?” 

“It wass a bombardment.” 

“They don’t say anything about a place called 
Clapham, or Bun Hill, do they?” 

“I haf heard noding,” said the linguist. 

That was all Bert could get for a time. But the 
excitement of all the men about him was conta- 
gious, and presently he saw Kurt standing alone, 
hands behind him, and looking at one of the dis- 
tant waterfalls very steadfastly. He went up 
and saluted, soldier-fashion. “Beg pardon, lieu- 
tenant,” he said. 

Kurt turned his face. It was unusually grave 
that morning. “I was just thinking I would like 
to see that waterfall closer,” he said. “It reminds 
me what do you want?” 

“I can’t make ’ead or tail of what they’re saying, 
sir. Would you mind telling me the news?” 

“Damn the news,” said Kurt. “You’ll get 
news enough before the day’s out. It’s the end 
of the world. They’re sending the Graf Zeppelin 
for us. She’ll be here by the morning, and we 
ought to be at Niagara — or eternal smash — 
within eight and forty hours. ... I want to 
look at that waterfall. You’d better come with 
me. Have you had your rations?” 

“Yessir.” 

“Very well. Come.” 

And musing profoundly, Kurt led the way 
across the rocks towards the distant waterfall. 
For a time Bert walked behind him in the char- 


240 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


acter of an escort ; then as they passed out of the 
atmosphere of the encampment, Kurt lagged for 
him to come alongside. 

“We shall be back in it all in two days’ time/’ 
he said. “And it’s a devil of a war to go back to. 
That’s the news. The world’s gone mad. Our 
fleet beat the Americans the night we got disabled, 
that’s clear. We lost eleven — eleven airships 
certain, and all their aeroplanes got smashed. 
God knows how much we smashed or how many 
we killed. But that was only the beginning. 
Our start’s been like firing a magazine. Every 
country was hiding flying-machines. They’re 
fighting in the air all over Europe — all over the 
world. The Japanese and Chinese have joined in. 
That’s the great fact. That’s the supreme fact. 
They’ve pounced into our little quarrels. . . . 
The Yellow Peril was a peril after all ! They’ve 
got thousands of airships. They’re all over the 
world. We bombarded London and Paris, and 
now the French and English have smashed up 
Berlin. And now Asia is at us all, and on the 
top of us all. . . . It’s mania. China on the 
top. And they don’t know where to stop. It’s 
limitless. It’s the last confusion. They’re bom- 
barding capitals, smashing up dockyards and fac- 
tories, mines and fleets.” 

“Did they do much to London, sir?” asked 
Bert. 

“Heaven knows. . . 

He said no more for a time. 

“This Labrador seems a quiet place,” he re- 
sumed at last. “I’m half a mind to stay here. 


THE “VATERLAND” IS DISABLED 241 


Can’t do that. No ! I’ve got to see it through. 
I’ve got to see it through. You’ve got to, too. 
Every one. . . . But why? ... I tell you — 
our world’s gone to pieces. There’s no way out 
of it, no way back. Here we are ! We’re like 
mice caught in a house on fire, we’re like cattle 
overtaken by a flood. Presently we shall be 
picked up, and back we shall go into the fighting. 
We shall kill and smash again — perhaps. It’s 
a Chino- Japanese air-fleet this time, and the odds 
are against us. Our turn will come. What will 
happen to you I don’t know, but for myself, I 
know quite well; I shall be killed.” 

“ You’ll be all right,” said Bert, after a queer 
pause. 

“No!” said Kurt, “I’m going to be killed. I 
didn’t know it before, but this morning, at dawn, 
I knew it — as though I’d been told.” 

“’Ow?” 

“I tell you I know.” 

“ But ’ow could you know ? ” 

“I know.” 

“Like being told?” 

“Like being certain. 

“I know,” he repeated, and for a time they 
walked in silence towards the waterfall. 

Kurt, wrapped in his thoughts, walked heed- 
lessly, and at last broke out again. “I’ve always 
felt young before, Smallways, but this morning I 
feel old — old. So old ! Nearer to death than 
old men feel. And I’ve always thought life 
was a lark. It isn’t. . . . This sort of thing has 
always been happening, I suppose — these things, 


242 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


wars and earthquakes, that sweep across all the 
decency of life. It's just as though I had woke 
up to it all for the first time. Every night since 
we were at New York I’ve dreamt of it. . . . 
And it’s always been so — it's the way of life. 
People are torn away from the people they care 
for ; homes are smashed, creatures full of life, and 
memories, and little peculiar gifts are scalded 
and smashed, and torn to pieces, and starved, 
and spoilt. London! Berlin! San Francisco! 
Think of all the human histories we ended in New 
York ! . . . And the others go on again as 
though such things weren’t possible. As I went 
on ! Like animals ! Just like animals.” 

He said nothing for a long time, and then he 
dropped out, “The Prince is a lunatic !” 

They came to a place where they had to climb, 
and then to a long peat level beside a rivulet. 
There a quantity of delicate little pink flowers 
caught Bert’s eye. “Gaw !” he said, and stooped 
to pick one. “In a place like this.” 

Kurt stopped and half turned. His face 
winced. 

“I never see such a flower,” said Bert. “It’s 
so delicate.” 

“Pick some more if you want to,” said Kurt. 

Bert did so, while Kurt stood and watched him. 
“Funny ’ow one always wants to pick flowers,” 
said Bert. 

Kurt had nothing to add to that. 

They went on again, without talking, for a long 
time. 

At last they came to a rocky hummock, from 


THE “ VATERLAND ” IS DISABLED 243 


which the view of the waterfall opened out. 
There Kurt stopped and seated himself on a rock. 
“That's as much as I wanted to see/' he explained. 
“It isn't very like, but it's like enough." 

“Like what?" 

“Another waterfall I knew." 

He asked a question abruptly. “Got a girl, 
Smallways ? " 

“Funny thing," said Bert, “those flowers, I 
suppose. — I was jes' thinking of 'er." 

“So was I." 

“What! Edna?" 

“No. I was thinking of my Edna. We've 
all got Ednas, I suppose, for our imaginations to 
play about. This was a girl. But all that's 
past for ever. It's hard to think I can't see her 
just for a minute — just let her know I'm think- 
ing of her." 

“Very likely," said Bert, “you'll see 'er all 
right." 

“No," said Kurt with decision, “I know” 

“I met her," he went on, “in a place like this 
— in the Alps — Engstlen Alp. There's a water- 
fall rather like this one — a broad waterfall down 
towards Innertkirchen. That's why I came here 
this morning. We slipped away and had half a 
day together beside it. And we picked flowers. 
Just such flowers as you picked. The same, 
for all I know. And gentian." 

“I know," said Bert; “me and Edna — we 
done things like that. Flowers. And all that. 
Seems years off now." 

“She was beautiful and daring and shy, Mein 


244 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


Gott ! . . . I can hardly hold myself for the de- 
sire to see her and hear her voice again before I 
die. Where is she? . . . Look here, Small- 

ways, I shall write a sort of letter And 

there’s her portrait.” He touched his breast 
pocket. 

“ You’ll see ’er again all right,” said Bert. 

“No! I shall never see her again. ... I 
don’t understand why people should meet just 
to be torn apart. But I know she and I will 
never meet again. That I know as surely as that 
the sun will rise, and that cascade come shining 
over the rocks after I am dead and done. . . . 
Oh ! It’s all foolishness and haste and violence 
and cruel folly, stupidity and blundering hate 
and selfish ambition — all the things that men 
have done — all the things they will ever do. 
Gott ! Smallways, what a muddle and confusion 
life has always been — the battles and massacres 
and disasters, the hates and harsh acts, the mur- 
ders and sweatings, the lynchings and cheatings. 
This morning I am tired of it all, as though I’d 
just found it out for the first time. I have found 
it out. When a man is tired of life, I suppose it 
is time for him to die. I’ve lost heart, and death 
is over me. Death is close to me, and I know I 
have got to end. But think of all the hopes I had 
only a little time ago, the sense of fine beginnings ! 
... It was all a sham. There were no begin- 
nings. . . . We’re just ants in ant-hill cities, in 
a world that doesn’t matter; that goes on and 
rambles into nothingness. New York — New 
York doesn’t even strike me as horrible. New 


THE “VATERLAND” IS DISABLED 245 


York was nothing but an ant-hill kicked to pieces 
by a fool ! 

“ Think of it, Smallways: there’s war every- 
where ! They’re smashing up their civilisation 
before they have made it. The sort of thing the 
English did at Alexandria, the Japanese at Port 
Arthur, the French at Casablanca, is going on 
everywhere. Everywhere ! Down in South 
America even they are fighting among them- 
selves ! No place is safe — no place is at peace. 
There is no place where a woman and her daughter 
can hide and be at peace. The war comes through 
the air, bombs drop in the night. Quiet people go 
out in the morning, and see air-fleets passing over- 
head — dripping death — dripping death !” 


CHAPTER VIII 


A WORLD AT WAR 

§ 1 

It was only very slowly that Bert got hold of 
this idea that the whole world was at war, that he 
formed any image at all of the crowded countries 
south of these Arctic solitudes stricken with terror 
and dismay as these new-born aerial navies swept 
across their skies. He was not used to thinking 
of the world as a whole, but as a limitless hinter- 
land of happenings beyond the range of his im- 
mediate vision. War in his imagination was 
something, a source of news and emotion, that hap- 
pened in a restricted area, called the Seat of War. 
But now the whole atmosphere was the Seat of 
War, and every land a cockpit. So closely had 
the nations raced along the path of research and 
invention, so secret and yet so parallel had been 
their plans and acquisitions, that it was within a 
few hours of the launching of the first fleet in 
Franconia that an Asiatic Armada beat its west- 
ward way across, high above the marvelling mill- 
ions in the plain of the Ganges. But the prepara- 
tions of the Confederation of Eastern Asia had 
been on an altogether more colossal scale than 
the German. “With this step,” said Tan Ting- 
246 


A WORLD AT WAR 


247 


siang, “we overtake and pass the West. We re- 
cover the peace of the world that these barbarians 
have destroyed.” 

Their secrecy and swiftness and inventions had 
far surpassed those of the- Germans, and where the 
Germans had had a hundred men at work the 
Asiatics had ten thousand. There came to their 
great aeronautic parks at Chinsi-fu and Tsingyen 
by the mono-rails that now laced the whole sur- 
face of China a limitless supply of skilled and able 
workmen, workmen far above the average Euro- 
pean in industrial efficiency. The news of the 
German World Surprise simply quickened their 
efforts. At the time of the bombardment of New 
York it is doubtful if the Germans had three hun- 
dred airships all together in the world ; the score 
of Asiatic fleets flying east and west and south 
must have numbered several thousand. More- 
over the Asiatics had a real fighting flying- 
machine, the, Niais as they were called, a light 
but quite efficient weapon, infinitely superior to 
the German drachenflieger. Like that, it was a 
one-man machine, but it was built very lightly of 
steel and cane and chemical silk, with a transverse 
engine, and a flapping sidewing. The aeronaut 
carried a gun firing explosive bullets loaded with 
oxygen, and in addition, and true to the best tra- 
dition of Japan, a sword. Mostly they were Japa- 
nese, and it is characteristic that from the first it 
was contemplated that the aeronaut should be a 
swordsman. The wings of these flyers had bat- 
like hooks forward, by which they were to cling 
to their antagonist’s gas-chambers while boarding 


248 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


him. These light flying-machines were carried 
with the fleets, and also sent overland or by sea 
to the front with the men. They were capable of 
flights of from two to five hundred miles accord- 
ing to the wind. 

So, hard upon the uprush of the first German 
air-fleet, these Asiatic swarms took to the atmos- 
phere. Instantly every organised Government in 
the world was frantically and vehemently building 
airships and whatever approach to a flying- 
machine its inventors had discovered. There was 
no time for diplomacy. Warnings and ultima- 
tums were telegraphed to and fro, and in a few 
hours all the panic-fierce world was openly at war, 
and at war in the most complicated way. For 
Britain and France and Italy had declared war 
upon Germany and outraged Swiss neutrality; 
India, at the sight of Asiatic airships, had broken 
into a Hindoo insurrection in Bengal and a Mo- 
hametan revolt hostile to this in the North-west 
Provinces — the latter spreading like wildfire 
from Gobi to the Gold Coast — and the Confedera- 
tion of Eastern Asia had seized the oil wells of 
Burmah and was impartially attacking America 
and Germany. In a week they were building 
airships in Damascus and Cairo and Johannes- 
burg ; Australia and New Zealand were frantically 
equipping themselves. One unique and terrify- 
ing aspect of this development was the swiftness 
with which these monsters could be produced. 
To build an ironclad took from two to four years ; 
an airship could be put together in as many weeks. 
Moreover, compared with even a torpedo boat, 


A WORLD AT WAR 


249 


the airship was remarkably simple to construct: 
given the air-chamber material, the engines, the 
gas plant, and the design, it was really not more 
complicated and far easier than an ordinary 
wooden boat had been a hundred years before. 
And now from Cape Horn to Nova Zembla, and 
from Canton round to Canton again, there 
were factories and workshops and industrial re- 
sources. 

And the German airships were barely in sight 
of the Atlantic waters, the first Asiatic fleet was 
scarcely reported from Upper Burmah, before the 
fantastic fabric of credit and finance that had held 
the world together economically for a hundred 
years strained and snapped. A tornado of realisa- 
tion swept through every stock exchange in the 
world; banks stopped payment, business shrank 
and ceased, factories ran on for a day or so by a 
sort of inertia, completing the orders of bankrupt 
and extinguished customers, then stopped. The 
New York Bert Smallways saw, for all its glare of 
light and traffic, was in the pit of an economic 
and financial collapse unparalleled in history. The 
flow of the food supply was already a little checked. 
And before the world-war had lasted two weeks — 
by the time, that is, that mast was rigged in 
Labrador — there was not a city or town in the 
world outside China, however far from the actual 
centres of destruction, where police and govern- 
ment were not adopting special emergency meth- 
ods to deal with a want of food and a glut of un- 
employed people. 

The special peculiarities of aerial warfare were 


250 


\HE WAR IN THE AIR 


of such a nature as to trend, once it had begun, 
almost inevitably towards social disorganisation. 
The first of these peculiarities was brought home 
to the Germans in their attack upon New York; 
the immense power of destruction an airship has 
over the thing below, and its relative inability to 
occupy or police or guard or garrison a surren- 
dered position. Necessarily, in the face of urban 
populations in a state of economic disorganisation 
and infuriated and starving, this led to violent 
and destructive collisions, and even where the air- 
fleet floated inactive above, there would be civil 
conflict and passionate disorder below. Nothing 
comparable to this state of affairs had been 
known in the previous history of warfare, unless 
we take such a case as that of a nineteenth 
century warship attacking some large savage or 
barbaric settlement, or one of those naval bom- 
bardments that disfigure the history of Great 
Britain in the late eighteenth century. Then, in- 
deed, there had been cruelties and destruction 
that faintly foreshadowed the horrors of the aerial 
war. Moreover, before the twentieth century the 
world had had but one experience, and that a com- 
paratively light one, in the Communist insurrec- 
tion of Paris, 1871, of the possibilities of a modern 
urban population under warlike stresses. 

A second peculiarity of airship war as it first 
came to the world that also made for social 
collapse, was the ineffectiveness of the early air- 
ships against each other. Upon anything below 
they could rain explosives in the most deadly 
fashion, forts and ships and cities lay at their 


A WORLD AT WAR 


251 


mercy, but unless they were prepared for a suicidal 
grapple they could do remarkably little mischief 
to each other. The armament of the huge Ger- 
man airships, big as the biggest mammoth liners 
afloat, was one machine gun that could easily 
have been packed up on a couple of mules. In ad- 
dition, when it became evident that the air must 
be fought for, the air-sailors were provided with 
rifles with explosive bullets of oxygen or inflam- 
mable substance, but no airship at any time ever 
carried as much in the way of guns and armour 
as the smallest gunboat on the navy list had been 
accustomed to do. Consequently, when these 
monsters met in battle, they manoeuvred for the 
upper place, or grappled and fought like junks, 
throwing grenades, fighting hand to hand in an 
entirely mediaeval fashion. The risks of a col- 
lapse and fall on either side came near to balanc- 
ing in every case the chances of victory. As a 
consequence, and after their first experiences of 
battle, one finds a growing tendency on the part 
of the air-fleet admirals to evade joining battle 
and to seek rather the moral advantage of a 
destructive counter attack. 

And if the airships were too ineffective, the early 
drachenflieger were either too unstable, like the 
German, or too light, like the Japanese, to pro- 
duce immediately decisive results. Later, it is 
true, the Brazilians launched a flying-machine of 
a type and scale that was capable of dealing with 
an airship, but they built only three or four, they 
operated only in South America, and they van- 
ished from history untraceably in the time when 


252 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


world-bankruptcy put a stop to all further engi- 
neering production on any considerable scale. 

The third peculiarity of aerial warfare was that 
it was at once enormously destructive and entirely 
indecisive. It had this unique feature, that both 
sides lay open to punitive attack. In all previous 
forms of war, both by land and sea, the losing side 
was speedily unable to raid its antagonist's terri- 
tory and the communications. One fought on a 
“ front," and behind that front the winner's sup- 
plies and resources, his towns and factories and 
capital, the peace of his country, were secure. If 
the war was a naval one, you destroyed your ene- 
my's battle fleet and then blockaded his ports, 
secured his coaling stations, and hunted down any 
stray cruisers that threatened your ports of com- 
merce. But to blockade and watch a coastline is 
one thing, to blockade and watch the whole sur- 
face of a country is another, and cruisers and 
privateers are things that take long to make, that 
cannot be packed up and hidden and carried un- 
ostentatiously from point to point. In aerial war 
the stronger side, even supposing it destroyed the 
main battle fleet of the weaker, had then either to 
patrol and watch or destroy every possible point 
at which he might produce another and perhaps 
a novel and more deadly form of flyer. It meant 
darkening his air with airships. It meant 
building them by the thousand and making aero- 
nauts by the hundred thousand. A small unin- 
flated airship could be hidden in a railway shed, 
in a village street, in a wood ; a flying machine is 
even less conspicuous. 


A WORLD AT WAR 


253 


And in the air are no streets, no channels, no 
point where one can say of an antagonist, “If he 
wants to reach my capital he must come by here.” 
In the air all directions lead everywhere. 

Consequently it was impossible to end a war by 
any of the established methods. A, having out- 
numbered and overwhelmed B, hovers, a thousand 
airships strong, over his capital, threatening to 
bombard it unless B submits. B replies by wire- 
less telegraphy that he is now in the act of bom- 
barding the chief manufacturing city of A by 
means of three raider airships. A denounces B’s 
raiders as pirates and so forth, bombards B’s 
capital, and sets off to hunt down B’s airships, 
while B, in a state of passionate emotion and 
heroic unconquerableness, sets to work amidst his 
ruins, making fresh airships and explosives for the 
benefit of A. The war became perforce a univer- 
sal guerilla war, a war inextricably involving civil- 
ians and homes and all the apparatus of social life. 

These aspects of aerial fighting took the world 
by surprise. There had been no foresight to de- 
duce these consequences. If there had been, the 
world would have arranged for a Universal Peace 
Conference in 1900. But mechanical invention 
had gone faster than intellectual and social organi- 
sation, and the world, with its silly old flags, its 
silly unmeaning tradition of nationality, its cheap 
newspapers and cheaper passions and imperial- 
isms, its base commercial motives and habitual 
insincerities and vulgarities, its race lies and con- 
flicts, was taken by surprise. Once the war be- 
gan there was no stopping it. The flimsy fabric 


254 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


of credit that had grown with no man foreseeing, 
and that had held those hundreds of millions in an 
economic interdependence that no man clearly 
understood, dissolved in panic. Everywhere went 
the airships dropping bombs, destroying any hope 
of a rally, and everywhere below were economic 
catastrophe, starving workless people, rioting, and 
social disorder. Whatever constructive guiding 
intelligence there had been among the nations 
vanished in the passionate stresses of the time. 
Such newspapers and documents and histories as 
survive from this period all tell one universal story 
of towns and cities with the food supply inter- 
rupted and their streets congested with starving 
unemployed ; of crises in administration and states 
of siege, of provisional Governments and Councils 
of Defence, and, in the cases of India and Egypt, 
insurrectionary committees taking charge, of the 
re-arming of the population, of the making of bat- 
teries and gun-pits, of the vehement manufacture 
of airships and flying-machines. 

One sees these things in glimpses, in illuminated 
moments, as if through a driving reek of clouds, 
going on all over the world. It was the dissolu- 
tion of an age ; it was the collapse of the civilisa- 
tion that had trusted to machinery, and the in- 
struments of its destruction were machines. But 
while the collapse of the previous great civilisa- 
tion, that of Rome, had been a matter of cen- 
turies, had been a thing of phase and phase, like 
the ageing and dying of a man, this, like his killing 
by railway or motor car, was one swift, conclusive 
smashing and an end. 









“ Other flapping bird shapes came into this affair 











A WORLD AT WAR 


255 


§ 2 

The early battles of the aerial war were no 
doubt determined by attempts to realise the old 
naval maxim, to ascertain the position of the 
enemy’s fleet and to destroy it. There was first 
the battle of the Bernese Oberland, in which the 
Italian and French navigables in their flank raid 
upon the Franconian Park were assailed by the 
Swiss experimental squadron, supported as the 
day wore on by German airships, and then the en- 
counter of the British Winterhouse-Dunn aero- 
planes with three unfortunate Germans. 

Then came the Battle of North India, in which 
the entire Anglo-Indian aeronautic settlement 
establishment fought for three days against over- 
whelming odds, and was dispersed and destroyed 
in detail. 

And simultaneously with the beginning of that 
commenced the momentous struggle of the Ger- 
mans and Asiatics that is usually known as the 
Battle of Niagara because of the objective of the 
Asiatic attack. But it passed gradually into a 
sporadic conflict over half a continent. Such 
German airships as escaped destruction in battle 
descended and surrendered to the Americans, and 
were re-manned, and in the end it became a series 
of pitiless and heroic encounters between the 
Americans, savagely resolved to exterminate their 
enemies, and a continually reinforced army of in- 
vasion from Asia quartered upon the Pacific slope 
and supported by an immense fleet. From the 
first the war in America was fought with implaca- 


256 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


ble bitterness; no quarter was asked, no prison- 
ers were taken. With ferocious and magnificent 
energy the Americans constructed and launched 
ship after ship to battle and perish against the 
Asiatic multitudes. All other affairs were sub- 
ordinate to this war, the whole population was 
presently living or dying for it. Presently, as I 
shall tell, the white men found in the Butteridge 
machine a weapon that could meet and fight the 
flying-machines of the Asiatic swordsmen. 

The Asiatic invasion of America completely 
effaced the German-American conflict. It van- 
ishes from history. At first it had seemed to 
promise quite sufficient tragedy in itself — begin- 
ning as it did in unforgettable massacre. After 
the destruction of central New York all America 
had risen like one man, resolved to die a thousand 
deaths rather than submit to Germany. The 
Germans grimly resolved upon beating the Ameri- 
cans into submission and, following out the plans 
developed by the Prince, had seized Niagara — in 
order to avail themselves of its enormous power- 
works; expelled all its inhabitants and made a 
desert of its environs as far as Buffalo. They had 
also, directly Great Britain and France declared 
war, wrecked the country upon the Canadian side 
for nearly ten miles inland. They began to bring 
up men and material from the fleet off the east 
coast, stringing out to and fro like bees getting 
honey. It was then that the Asiatic forces ap- 
peared, and it was in their attack upon this Ger- 
man base at Niagara that the air-fleets of East and 
West first met and the greater issue became clear. 


A WORLD AT WAR 


257 


One conspicuous peculiarity of the early aerial 
fighting arose from the profound secrecy with 
which the airships had been prepared. Each 
power had had but the dimmest inkling of the 
schemes of its rivals, and even experiments with 
its own devices were limited by the needs of 
secrecy. None of the designers of airships and 
aeroplanes had known clearly what their inven- 
tions might have to fight; many had not im- 
agined they would have to fight anything 
whatever in the air; and had planned them only 
for the dropping of explosives. Such had been 
the German idea. The only weapon for fighting 
another airship with which the Franconian fleet 
had been provided was the machine gun forward. 
Only after the fight over New York were the men 
given short rifles with detonating bullets. Theo- 
retically, the drachenflieger were to have been the 
fighting weapon. They were declared to be aerial 
torpedo-boats, and the aeronaut was supposed to 
swoop close to his antagonist and cast his bombs 
as he whirled past. But indeed these contriv- 
ances were hopelessly unstable; not one-third in 
any engagement succeeded in getting back to the 
mother airship. The rest were either smashed up 
or grounded. 

The allied Chino- Japanese fleet made the same 
distinction as the Germans between airships and 
fighting machines heavier than air, but the type 
in both cases was entirely different from the occi- 
dental models, and — it is eloquent of the vigour 
with which these great peoples took up and bet- 
tered the European methods of scientific research 


258 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


— in almost every particular the invention of 
Asiatic engineers. Chief among these, it is worth 
remarking, was Mohini K. Chatterjee, a political 
exile, who had formerly served in the British- 
Indian aeronautic park at Lahore. 

The German airship was fish-shaped, with a 
blunted head; the Asiatic airship was also fish- 
shaped, but not so much on the lines of a cod or 
goby as of a ray or sole. It had a wide, flat un- 
derside, unbroken by windows or any opening 
except along the middle line. Its cabins occupied 
its axis, with a sort of bridge deck above, and the 
gas-chambers gave the whole affair the shape of a 
gipsy’s hooped tent, except that it was much 
flatter. The German airship was essentially a 
navigable balloon very much lighter than air ; the 
Asiatic airship was very little lighter than air and 
skimmed through it with much greater velocity 
if with considerably less stability. They carried 
fore and aft guns, the latter much the larger, 
throwing inflammatory shells, and in addition 
they had nests for riflemen on both the upper 
and the under side. Light as this armament was 
in comparison with the smallest gunboat that ever 
sailed, it was sufficient for them to outfight as well 
as outfly the German monster airships. In action 
they flew to get behind or over the Germans : they 
even dashed underneath, avoiding only passing 
immediately beneath the magazine, and then as 
soon as they had crossed let fly with their rear 
gun, and sent flares or oxygen shells into the 
antagonist’s gas-chambers. 

It was not in their airships, but, as I have said, 


A WORLD AT WAR 


259 


in their flying-machines proper, that the strength 
of the Asiatics lay. Next only to the Butte ridge 
machine, these were certainly the most efficient 
heavier-than-air fliers that had ever appeared. 
They were the invention of a Japanese artist, and 
they differed in type extremely from the box-kite 
quality of the German drachenflieger. They had 
curiously curved, flexible side wings, more like 
bent butterfly’s wings than anything else, and 
made of a substance like celluloid and of brightly 
painted silk, and they had a long humming-bird 
tail. At the forward corner of the wings were 
hooks, rather like the claws of a bat, by which the 
machine could catch and hang and tear at the 
walls of an airship’s gas-chamber. The solitary 
rider sat between the wings above a transverse 
explosive engine, an explosive engine that dif- 
fered in no essential particular from those in use 
in the light motor bicycles of the period. Below 
was a single large wheel. The rider sat astride 
of a saddle, as in the Butteridge machine, and he 
carried a large double-edged two-handed sword, 
in addition to his explosive-bullet firing rifle. 

§ 3 

One sets down these particulars and compares 
the points of the American and German pattern 
of aeroplane and navigable, but none of these 
facts were clearly known to any of those who 
fought in this monstrously confused battle above 
the American great lakes. 

Each side went into action against it knew not 


260 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


what, under novel conditions and with apparatus 
that even without hostile attacks was capable 
of producing the most disconcerting surprises. 
Schemes of action, attempts at collective manoeu- 
vring necessarily went to pieces directly the 
fight began, just as they did in almost all the 
early ironclad battles of the previous century. 
Each captain then had to fall back upon indi- 
vidual action and his own devices ; one would see 
triumph in what another read as a cue for flight 
and despair. It is as true of the Battle of Niagara 
as of the Battle of Lissa that it was not a battle 
but a bundle of “battlettes” ! 

To such a spectator as Bert it presented itself 
as a series of incidents, some immense, some 
trivial, but collectively incoherent. He never 
had a sense of any plain issue joined, of any point 
struggled for and won or lost. He saw tremen- 
dous things happen and in the end his world 
darkened to disaster and ruin. 

He saw the battle from the ground, from 
Prospect Park and from Goat Island, whither 
he fled. 

But the manner in which he came to be on the 
ground needs explaining. 

The Prince had resumed command of his fleet 
through wireless telegraphy long before the Zep- 
pelin had located his encampment in Labrador. 
By his direction the German air-fleet, whose 
advance scouts had been in contact with the 
Japanese over the Rocky Mountains, had con- 
centrated upon Niagara and awaited his arrival. 
He had rejoined his command early in the morn- 


A WORLD AT WAR 


261 


ing of the twelfth, and Bert had his first prospect 
of the Gorge of Niagara while he was doing net 
drill outside the middle gas-chamber at sunrise. 
The Zeppelin was flying very high at the time, 
and far below he saw the water in the gorge 
marbled with froth and then away to the west the 
great crescent of the Canadian Fall shining, flick- 
ering and foaming in the level sunlight and sending 
up a deep, incessant thudding rumble to the sky. 
The air-fleet was keeping station in an enormous 
crescent, with its horns pointing south-westward, 
a long array of shining monsters with tails rotat- 
ing slowly and German ensigns now trailing from 
their bellies aft of their Marconi pendants. 

Niagara city was still largely standing then, 
albeit its streets were empty of all life. Its 
bridges were intact; its hotels and restaurants 
still flying flags and inviting sky signs ; its power- 
stations running. But about it the country on 
both sides of the gorge might have been swept by 
a colossal broom. Everything that could pos- 
sibly give cover to an attack upon the German 
position at Niagara had been levelled as ruth- 
lessly as machinery and explosives could con- 
trive; houses blown up and burnt, woods burnt, 
fences and crops destroyed. The mono-rails had 
been torn up, and the roads in particular cleared 
of all possibility of concealment or shelter. Seen 
from above, the effect of this wreckage was gro- 
tesque. Young woods had been destroyed whole- 
sale by dragging wires, and the spoilt saplings, 
smashed or uprooted, lay in swathes like corn 
after the sickle. Houses had an appearance of 


262 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


being flattened down by the pressure of a gigantic 
finger. Much burning was still going on, and 
large areas had been reduced to patches of smoul- 
dering and sometimes still glowing blackness. 
Here and there lay the debris of belated fugitives, 
carts, and dead bodies of horses and men; and 
where houses had had water supplies there were 
pools of water and running springs from the 
ruptured pipes. In unscorched fields horses and 
cattle still fed peacefully. Beyond this desolated 
area the countryside was still standing, but almost 
all the people had fled. Buffalo was on fire to an 
enormous extent, and there were no signs of any 
efforts to grapple with the flames. 

Niagara city itself was being rapidly converted 
to the needs of a military depot. A large number 
of skilled engineers had already been brought 
from the fleet and were busily at work adapting 
the exterior industrial apparatus of the place to 
the purposes of an aeronautic park. They had 
made a gas recharging station at the corner of the 
American Fall above the funicular railway, and 
they were opening up a much larger area to the 
south for the same purpose. Over the power- 
houses and hotels and suchlike prominent or im- 
portant points the German flag was flying. 

The Zeppelin circled slowly over this scene twice 
while the Prince surveyed it from the swinging 
gallery; it then rose towards the centre of the 
crescent and transferred the Prince and his suite, 
Kurt included, to the Hohenzollern, which had 
been chosen as the flagship during the impending 
battle. They were swung up on a small cable 


A WORLD AT WAR 


263 


from the forward gallery, and the men of the 
Zeppelin manned the outer netting as the Prince 
and his staff left them. The Zeppelin then came 
about, circled down and grounded in Prospect 
Park, in order to land the wounded and take 
aboard explosives ; for she had come to Labrador 
with her magazines empty, it being uncertain 
what weight she might need to carry. She also 
replenished the hydrogen in one of her forward 
chambers which had leaked. 

Bert was detailed as a bearer and helped carry 
the wounded one by one into the nearest of the 
large hotels that faced the Canadian shore. The 
hotel was quite empty except that there were 
two trained American nurses and a negro porter, 
and three or four Germans awaiting them. Bert 
went with the Zeppelin's doctor into the main 
street of the place, and they broke into a drug 
shop and obtained various things of which they 
stood in need. As they returned they found an 
officer and two men making a rough inventory of 
the available material in the various stores. Ex- 
cept for them the wide, main street of the town 
was quite deserted, the people had been given 
three hours to clear out, and everybody, it seemed, 
had done so. At one corner a dead man lay 
against the wall — shot. Two or three dogs were 
visible up the empty vista, but towards its river 
end the passage of a string of mono-rail cars broke 
the stillness and the silence. They were loaded 
with hose, and were passing to the trainful of 
workers who were converting Prospect Park into 
an airship dock. 


264 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


Bert pushed a case of medicine balanced on a 
bicycle taken from an adjacent shop, to the hotel, 
and then he was sent to load bombs into the Zep- 
pelin magazine, a duty that called for elaborate 
care. From this job he was presently called off 
by the captain of the Zeppelin, who sent him with 
a note to the officer in charge of the Anglo-Ameri- 
can Power Company, for the field telephone had 
still to be adjusted. Bert received his instruc- 
tions in German, whose meaning he guessed, and 
saluted and took the note, not caring to betray 
his ignorance of the language. He started off 
with a bright air of knowing his way and turned 
a corner or so, and was only beginning to suspect 
that he did not know where he was going when 
his attention was recalled to the sky by the report 
of a gun from the Hohenzollern and celestial 
cheering. 

He looked up and found the view obstructed by 
the houses on either side of the street. He hesi- 
tated, and then curiosity took him back towards 
the bank of the river. Here his view was incon- 
venienced by trees, and it was with a start that 
he discovered the Zeppelin, which he knew had 
still a quarter of her magazines to fill, was rising 
over Goat Island. She had not waited for her 
complement of ammunition. It occurred to him 
that he was left behind. He ducked back among 
the trees and bushes until he felt secure from any 
after-thought on the part of the Zeppelin’s cap- 
tain. Then his curiosity to see what the German 
air-fleet faced overcame him, and drew him at 
last halfway across the bridge to Goat Island. 


A WORLD AT WAR 


265 


From that point he had nearly a hemisphere of 
sky and got his first glimpse of the Asiatic airships 
low in the sky above the glittering tumults of the 
Upper Rapids. 

They were far less impressive than the German 
ships. He could not judge the distance, and they 
flew edgeways to him, so as to conceal the broader 
aspect of their bulk. 

Bert stood there in the middle of the bridge, in 
a place that most people who knew it remembered 
as a place populous with sightseers and excur- 
sionists, and he was the only human being in sight 
there. Above him, very high in the heavens, the 
contending air-fleets manoeuvred; below him the 
river seethed like a sluice towards the American 
Fall. He was curiously dressed. His cheap blue 
serge trousers were thrust into German airship 
rubber boots, and on his head he wore an aero- 
naut’s white cap that was a trifle too large for 
him. He thrust that back to reveal his staring 
little Cockney face, still scarred upon the brow. 
“Gaw!” he whispered. 

He stared. He gesticulated. Once or twice he 
shouted and applauded. 

Then at a certain point terror seized him and he 
took to his heels in the direction of Goat Island. 

§ 4 

For a time after they were in sight of each other, 
neither fleet attempted to engage. The Germans 
numbered sixty-seven great airships and they 
maintained the crescent formation at a height of 


266 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


nearly four thousand feet. They kept a distance 
of about one and a half lengths, so that the horns 
of the crescent were nearly thirty miles apart. 
Closely in tow of the airships of the extreme 
squadrons on either wing were about thirty 
drachenflieger ready manned, but these were too 
small and distant for Bert to distinguish. 

At first, only what was called the Southern 
fleet of the Asiatics was visible to him. It con- 
sisted of forty airships, carrying all together nearly 
four hundred one-man flying-machines upon their 
flanks, and for some time it flew slowly and at a 
minimum distance of perhaps a dozen miles from 
the Germans, eastward across their front. At 
first Bert could distinguish only the greater bulks, 
then he perceived the one-man machines as a 
multitude of very small objects drifting like 
motes in the sunshine about and beneath the 
larger shapes. 

Bert saw nothing then of the second fleet of the 
Asiatics, though probably that was coming into 
sight of the Germans at the time, in the north- 
west. 

The air was very still, the sky almost without a 
cloud, and the German fleet had risen to an im- 
mense height, so that the airships seemed no 
longer of any considerable size. Both ends of 
their crescent showed plainly. As they beat 
southward they passed slowly between Bert and 
the sunlight, and became black outlines of them- 
selves. The drachenflieger appeared as little 
flecks of black on either wing of this aerial Ar- 
mada. 


A WORLD AT WAR 


267 


The two fleets seemed in no hurry to engage. 
The Asiatics went far away into the east, quick- 
ening their pace and rising as they did so, and 
then tailed out into a long column and came 
flying back, rising towards the German left. The 
squadrons of the latter came about, facing this 
oblique advance, and suddenly little flickerings 
and a faii^t crepitating sound told that they had 
opened fire. For a time no effect was visible to 
the watcher on the bridge. Then, like a handful 
of snowflakes, the drachenflieger swooped to the 
attack, and a multitude of red specks whirled up 
to meet them. It was to Bert’s sense not only 
enormously remote but singularly inhuman. Not 
four hours since he had been on one of those very 
airships, and yet they seemed to him now not 
gas-bags carrying men, but strange sentient 
creatures that moved about and did things with 
a purpose of their own. The flight of the Asiatic 
and German flying-machines joined and dropped 
earthward, became like a handful of white and 
red rose petals flung from a distant window, grew 
larger, until Bert could see the overturned ones 
spinning through the air, and were hidden by 
great volumes of dark smoke that were rising in 
the direction of Buffalo. For a time they all 
were hidden, then two or three white and a num- 
ber of red ones rose again into the sky, like a 
swarm of big butterflies, and circled fighting and 
drove away out of sight again towards the east. 

A heavy report recalled Bert’s eyes to the 
zenith, and behold, the great crescent had lost its 
dressing and burst into a disorderly long cloud of 


268 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


airships! One had dropped halfway down the 
sky. It was flaming fore and aft, and even as 
Bert looked it turned over and fell, spinning over 
and over itself and vanished into the smoke of 
Buffalo. 

Bert’s mouth opened and shut, and he clutched 
tighter on the rail of the bridge. For some mo- 
ments — they seemed long moments — the two 
fleets remained without any further change, flying 
obliquely towards each other, and making what 
came to Bert’s ears as a midget uproar. Then 
suddenly from either side airships began dropping 
out of alignment, smitten by missiles he could 
neither see nor trace. The string of Asiatic ships 
swung round and either charged into or over (it 
was difficult to say from below) the shattered line 
of the Germans, who seemed to open out to give 
way to them. Some sort of manoeuvring began, 
but Bert could not grasp its import. The left of 
the battle became a confused dance of airships. 
For some minutes up there the two crossing lines 
of ships looked so close it seemed like a hand-to- 
hand scuffle in the sky. Then they broke up into 
groups and duels. The descent of German air- 
ships towards the lower sky increased. One of 
them flared down and vanished far away in the 
north; two dropped with something twisted and 
crippled in their movements; then a group of 
antagonists came down from the zenith in an 
eddying conflict, two Asiatics against one Ger- 
man, and were presently joined by another, and 
drove away eastward all together with others 
dropping out of the German line to join them. 


A WORLD AT WAR 


269 


One Asiatic either rammed or collided with a still 
more gigantic German, and the two went spinning 
to destruction together. The northern squadron 
of Asiatics came into the battle unnoted by Bert, 
except that the multitude of ships above seemed 
presently increased. In a little while the fight 
was utter confusion, drifting on the whole to the 
southwest against the wind. It became more and 
more a series of group encounters. Here a huge 
German airship flamed earthward with a dozen 
flat Asiatic craft about her, crushing her every at- 
tempt to recover. Here another hung with its 
screw fighting off the swordsmen from a swarm of 
flying-machines. Here, again, an Asiatic aflame at 
either end swooped out of the battle. His atten- 
tion went from incident to incident in the vast 
clearness overhead ; these conspicuous cases of de- 
struction caught and held his mind ; it was only 
very slowly that any sort of scheme manifested it- 
self between those nearer, more striking episodes. 

The mass of the airships that eddied remotely 
above was, however, neither destroying nor de- 
stroyed. The majority of them seemed to be 
going at full speed and circling upward for posi- 
tion, exchanging ineffectual shots as they did so. 
Very little ramming was essayed after the first 
tragic downfall of rammer and rammed, and what- 
ever attempts at boarding were made were in- 
visible to Bert. There seemed, however, a steady 
attempt to isolate antagonists, to cut them off 
from their fellows and bear them down, causing 
a perpetual sailing back and interlacing of these 
shoaling bulks. The greater numbers of the 


270 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


Asiatics and their swifter heeling movements gave 
them the effect of persistently attacking the Ger- 
mans. Overhead, and evidently endeavouring to 
keep itself in touch with the works of Niagara, a 
body of German airships drew itself together into 
a compact phalanx, and the Asiatics became more 
and more intent upon breaking this up. He was 
grotesquely reminded of fish in a fish-pond strug- 
gling for crumbs. He could see puny puffs of 
smoke and the flash of bombs, but never a sound 
came down to him. . . . 

A flapping shadow passed for a moment be- 
tween Bert and the sun and was followed by 
another. A whirring of engines, click, clock, 
clitter clock, smote upon his ears. Instantly he 
forgot the zenith. 

Perhaps a hundred yards above the water, out 
of the south, riding like Valkyries swiftly through 
the air on the strange steeds the engineering of 
Europe had begotten upon the artistic inspiration 
of Japan, came a long string of Asiatic swordsmen. 
The wings flapped jerkily, click, clock, clitter 
clock, and the machines drove up; they spread 
and ceased, and the apparatus came soaring 
through the air. So they rose and fell and rose 
again. They passed so closely overhead that 
Bert could hear their voices calling to one another. 
They swooped towards Niagara city and landed 
one after another in a long line in a clear space 
before the hotel. But he did not stay to watch 
them land. One yellow face had craned over and 
looked at him, and for one enigmatical instant 
met his eyes. . . . 


A WORLD AT WAR 


271 


It was then the idea came to Bert that he was 
altogether too conspicuous in the middle of the 
bridge, and that he took to his heels towards 
Goat Island. Thence, dodging about among the 
trees, with perhaps an excessive self-consciousness, 
he watched the rest of the struggle. 

§ 5 

When Bert’s sense of security was sufficiently 
restored for him to watch the battle again, he 
perceived that a brisk little fight was in progress 
between the Asiatic aeronauts and the German 
engineers for the possession of Niagara city. It 
was the first time in the whole course of the war 
that he had seen anything resembling fighting as 
he had studied it in the illustrated papers of his 
youth. It seemed to him almost as though things 
were coming right. He saw men carrying rifles 
and taking cover and running briskly from point 
to point in a loose attacking formation. The first 
batch of aeronauts had probably been under the 
impression that the city was deserted. They had 
grounded in the open near Prospect Park and ap- 
proached the houses towards the power-works 
before they were disillusioned by a sudden fire. 
They had scattered back to the cover of a bank 
near the water — it was too far for them to reach 
their machines again; they were lying and firing 
at the men in the hotels and frame-houses about 
the power-works. 

Then to their support came a second string of 
red flying-machines driving up from the east. 


272 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


They rose up out of the haze above the houses and 
came round in a long curve as if surveying the 
position below. The fire of the Germans rose to 
a roar, and one of those soaring shapes gave an 
abrupt jerk backward and fell among the houses. 
The others swooped down exactly like great birds 
upon the roof of the power-house. They caught 
upon it, and from each sprang a nimble little 
figure and ran towards the parapet. 

Other flapping bird-shapes came into this affair, 
but Bert had not seen their coming. A staccato 
of shots came over to him, reminding him of army 
manoeuvres, of newspaper descriptions of fights, of 
all that was entirely correct in his conception of 
warfare. He saw quite a number of Germans 
running from the outlying houses towards the 
power-house. Two fell. One lay still, but the 
other wriggled and made efforts for a time. The 
hotel that was used as a hospital, and to which 
he had helped carry the wounded men from the 
Zeppelin earlier in the day, suddenly ran up the 
Geneva flag. The town that had seemed so quiet 
had evidently been concealing a considerable num- 
ber of Germans, and they were now concentrating 
to hold the central power-house. He wondered 
what ammunition they might have. More and 
more of the Asiatic flying-machines came into the 
conflict. They had disposed of the unfortunate 
German drachenflieger and were now aiming at 
the incipient aeronautic park, the electric gas 
generators and repair stations which formed the 
German base. Some landed, and their aeronauts 
took cover and became energetic infantry soldiers, 



“With renewed uproar the others closed again” 








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. 




















































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A WORLD AT WAR 


273 


Others hovered above the fight, their men ever 
and again firing shots down at some chance ex- 
posure below. The firing came in paroxysms ; 
now there would be a watchful lull and now a rapid 
tattoo of shots, rising to a roar. Once or twice 
flying machines, as they circled warily, came right 
overhead, and for a time Bert gave himself body 
and soul to cowering. 

Ever and again a larger thunder mingled with 
the rattle and reminded him of the grapple of air- 
ships far above, but the nearer fight held his 
attention. 

Abruptly something dropped from the zenith; 
something like a barrel or a huge football. 

Crash ! It' smashed with an immense report. 
It had fallen among the grounded Asiatic aero- 
planes that lay among the turf and flower-beds 
near the river. They flew in scraps and frag- 
ments, turf, trees, and gravel leapt and fell; the 
aeronauts still lying along the canal bank were 
thrown about like sacks, catspaws flew across the 
foaming water. All the windows of the hotel 
hospital that had been shiningly reflecting blue 
sky and airships the moment before became vast 
black stars. Bang ! — a second followed. Bert 
looked up and was filled with a sense of a number 
of monstrous bodies swooping down, coming down 
on the whole affair like a flight of bellying blank- 
ets, like a string of vast dish-covers. The central 
tangle of the battle above was circling down as if 
to come into touch with the power-house fight. 
He got a new effect of airships altogether, as vast 
things coming down upon him, growing swiftly 


274 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


larger and larger and more overwhelming, until 
the houses over the way seemed small, the Ameri- 
can rapids narrow, the bridge flimsy, the com- 
batants infinitesimal. As they came down they 
became audible as a complex of shoutings and 
vast creakings and groanings and beatings and 
throbbings and shouts and shots. The fore- 
shortened black eagles at the fore-ends of the 
Germans had an effect of actual combat of flying 
feathers. 

Some of these fighting airships came within five 
hundred feet of the ground. Bert could see men 
on the lower galleries of the Germans, firing rifles ; 
could see Asiatics clinging to the ropes; saw one 
man in aluminium diver’s gear fall flashing head- 
long into the waters above Goat Island. For the 
first time he saw the Asiatic airships closely. 
From this aspect they reminded him more than 
anything else of colossal snowshoes; they had a 
curious patterning in black and white, in forms 
that reminded him of the engine-turned cover of 
a watch. They had no hanging galleries, but 
from little openings on the middle line peeped 
out men and the muzzles of guns. So, driving in 
long, descending and ascending curves, these 
monsters wrestled and fought. It was like clouds 
fighting, like puddings trying to assassinate each 
other. They whirled and circled about each other, 
and for a time threw Goat Island and Niagara into 
a smoky twilight, through which the sunlight 
smote in shafts and beams. They spread and 
closed and spread and grappled and drove round 
over the rapids, and two miles away or more into 


A WORLD AT WAR 


275 


Canada, and back over the Falls again. A Ger- 
man caught fire, and the whole crowd broke away 
from her flare and rose about her dispersing, leav- 
ing her to drop towards Canada and blow up as 
she dropped. Then with renewed uproar the 
others closed again. Once from the men in Niag- 
ara city came a sound like an ant-hill cheering. 
Another German burnt, and one badly deflated by 
the prow of an antagonist, flopped out of action 
southward. 

It became more and more evident that the Ger- 
mans were getting the worst of the unequal fight. 
More and more obviously were they being perse- 
cuted. Less and less did they seem to fight with 
any object other than escape. The Asiatics swept 
by them and above them, ripped their bladders, 
set them alight, picked off their dimly seen men in 
diving clothes, who struggled against fire and tear 
with fire extinguishers and silk ribbons in the 
inner netting. They answered only with ineffec- 
tual shots. Thence the battle circled back over 
Niagara, and then suddenly the Germans, as if at 
a preconcerted signal, broke and dispersed, going 
east, west, north, and south, in open and confused 
flight. The Asiatics, as they realised this, rose to 
fly above them and after them. Only one little 
knot of four Germans and perhaps a dozen Asiatics 
remained fighting about the Hohenzollern and the 
Prince as he circled in a last attempt to save 
Niagara. 

Round they swooped once again over the 
Canadian Fall, over the waste of waters east- 
ward, until they were distant and small, and then 


276 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


round and back, hurrying, bounding, swooping 
towards the one gaping spectator. 

The whole struggling mass approached very 
swiftly, growing rapidly larger, and coming out 
black and featureless against the afternoon sun 
and above the blinding welter of the Upper 
Rapids. It grew like a storm cloud until once 
more it darkened the sky. The flat Asiatic air- 
ships kept high above the Germans and behind 
them, and fired unanswered bullets into their 
gas-chambers and upon their flanks ; the one-man 
flying-machines hovered and alighted like a swarm 
of attacking bees. Nearer they came and nearer, 
filling the lower heaven. Two of the Germans 
swooped and rose again, but the Hohenzollern had 
suffered too much for that. She lifted weakly, 
turned sharply as if to get out of the battle, burst 
into flames fore and aft, swept down to the water, 
splashed into it obliquely, and rolled over and 
over and came down stream rolling and smashing 
and writhing like a thing alive, halting and then 
coming on again, with her torn and bent propeller 
still beating the air. The bursting flames splut- 
tered out again in clouds of steam. It was a dis- 
aster gigantic in its dimensions. She lay across 
the rapids like an island, like tall cliffs, tall cliffs 
that came rolling, smoking, and crumpling, and 
collapsing, advancing with a sort of fluctuating 
rapidity upon Bert. One Asiatic airship — it 
looked to Bert from below like three hundred 
yards of pavement — whirled back and circled 
two or three times over that great overthrow, and 
half a dozen crimson flying-machines danced for a 


A WORLD AT WAR 


277 


moment like great midges in the sunlight before 
they swept on after their fellows. The rest of the 
fight had already gone over the island, a wild 
crescendo of shots and yells and smashing uproar. 
It was hidden from Bert now by the trees of the 
island, and forgotten by him in the nearer spec- 
tacle of the huge advance of the defeated German 
airship. Something fell with a mighty smashing 
and splintering of boughs unheeded behind him. 

It seemed for a time that the Hohenzollern must 
needs break her back upon the Parting of the 
Waters, and then for a time her propeller flopped 
and frothed in the river and thrust the mass of 
buckling, crumpled wreckage towards the Ameri- 
can shore. Then the sweep of the torrent that 
foamed down to the American Fall caught her, 
and in another minute the immense mass of de- 
flating wreckage, with flames spurting out in three 
new places, had crashed against the bridge that 
joined Goat Island and Niagara city, and forced 
a long arm, as it were, in a heaving tangle under 
the central span. Then the middle chambers blew 
up with a loud report, and in another moment 
the bridge had given way and the main bulk of 
the airship, like some grotesque cripple in rags, 
staggered, flapping and waving flambeaux to the 
crest of the Fall and hesitated there and vanished 
in a desperate suicidal leap. 

Its detached fore-end remained jammed against 
that little island, Green Island it used to be called, 
which forms the stepping-stone between the main- 
land and Goat Island’s patch of trees. 

Bert followed this disaster from the Parting of 


278 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


the Waters to the bridge head. Then, regardless 
of cover, regardless of the Asiatic airship hovering 
like a huge house roof without walls above the 
Suspension Bridge, he sprinted along towards 
the north and came out for the first time upon 
that rocky point by Luna Island that looks sheer 
down upon the American Fall. There he stood 
breathless amidst that eternal rush of sound, 
breathless and staring. 

Far below, and travelling rapidly down the 
gorge, whirled something like a huge empty sack. 
For him it meant — what did it not mean ? — the 
German air-fleet, Kurt, the Prince, Europe, all 
things stable and familiar, the forces that had 
brought him, the forces that had seemed indis- 
putably victorious. And it went down the rapids 
like an empty sack and left the visible world to 
Asia, to yellow people beyond Christendom, to all 
that was terrible and strange ! 

Remote over Canada receded the rest of that 
conflict and vanished beyond the range of his 
vision. . . . 


CHAPTER IX 


ON GOAT ISLAND 

§1 

The whack of a bullet on the rocks beside him 
reminded him that he was a visible object and 
wearing at least portions of a German uniform. 
It drove him into the trees again, and for a time 
he dodged and dropped and sought cover like a 
chick hiding among reeds from imaginary hawks. 
“Beaten,” he whispered. “Beaten and done for. 
. . . Chinese! Yellow chaps chasing ’em!” 

At last he came to rest in a clump of bushes near 
a locked-up and deserted refreshment shed within 
view of the American side. They made a sort of 
hole and harbour for him; they met completely 
overhead. He looked across the rapids, but the 
firing had ceased now altogether and everything 
seemed quiet. The Asiatic aeroplane had moved 
from its former position above the Suspension 
Bridge, was motionless now above Niagara city, 
shadowing all that district about the power-house 
which had been the scene of the land fight. The 
monster had an air of quiet and assured pre- 
dominance, and from its stern it trailed, serene 
and ornamental, a long streaming flag, the red, 
black, and yellow of the great alliance, the Sun- 
rise and the Dragon. Beyond, to the east, and 
279 


280 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


at a much higher level, hung a second consort, 
and Bert, presently gathering courage, wriggled 
out and craned his neck to find another still air- 
ship against the sunset in the south. 

“Gaw!” he said. “Beaten and chased! My 
Gawd !” 

The fighting, it seemed at first, was quite over 
in Niagara city, though a German flag was still 
flying from one shattered house. A white sheet 
was hoisted above the power-house, and this re- 
mained flying all through the events that followed. 
But presently came a sound of shots and then 
German soldiers running. They disappeared 
among the houses, and then came two engineers 
in blue shirts and trousers hotly pursued by three 
Japanese swordsmen. The foremost of the two 
fugitives was a shapely man, and ran lightly and 
well; the second was a sturdy little man, and 
rather fat. He ran comically in leaps and bounds, 
with his plump arms bent up by his side and his 
head thrown back. The pursuers ran with uni- 
forms and dark thin metal and leather head- 
dresses. The little man stumbled, and Bert 
gasped, realising a new horror in war. 

The foremost swordsman won three strides on 
him and was near enough to slash at him and miss 
as he spurted. 

A dozen yards they ran, and then the swords- 
man slashed again, and Bert could hear across the 
waters a little sound like the moo of an elfin cow 
as the fat little man fell forward. Slash went the 
swordsman and slash at something on the ground 
that tried to save itself with ineffectual hands. 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


281 


“Oh, I carn’t !” cried Bert, near blubbering, and 
staring with starting eyes. 

The swordsman slashed a fourth time and went 
on as his fellows came up after the better runner. 
The hindmost swordsman stopped and turned 
back. He had perceived some movement per- 
haps; but at any rate he stood, and ever and 
again slashed at the fallen body. 

“Oo-oo!” groaned Bert at every slash, and 
shrank closer into the bushes and became very 
still. Presently came a sound of shots from the 
town, and then everything was quiet, everything, 
even the hospital. 

He saw presently little figures sheathing swords 
come out from the houses and walk to the debris 
of the flying-machines the bomb had destroyed. 
Others appeared wheeling undamaged aeroplanes 
upon their wheels as men might wheel bicycles, 
and sprang into the saddles and flapped into the 
air. A string of three airships appeared far away 
in the east and flew towards the zenith. The one 
that hung low above Niagara city came still lower 
and dropped a rope ladder to pick up men from 
the power-house. 

For a long time he watched the further happen- 
ings in Niagara city as a rabbit might watch a 
meet. He saw men going from building to build- 
ing, to set fire to them, as he presently realised, 
and he heard a series of dull detonations from the 
wheel pit of the power-house. Some similar busi- 
ness went on among the works on the Canadian 
side. Meanwhile more and more airships ap- 
peared, and many more flying-machines, until at 


282 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


last it seemed to him nearly a third of the Asiatic 
fleet had re-assembled. He watched them from 
his bush, cramped but immovable, watched them 
gather and range themselves and signal and pick 
up men, until at last they sailed away towards the 
glowing sunset, going to the great Asiatic rendez- 
vous, above the oil wells of Cleveland. They 
dwindled and passed away, leaving him alone, so 
far as he could tell, the only living man in a world 
of ruin and strange loneliness almost beyond 
describing. He watched them recede and vanish. 
He stood gaping after them. 

“Gaw!” he said at last, like one who rouses 
himself from a trance. 

It was far more than any personal desolation 
and extremity that flooded his soul. It seemed 
to him indeed that this must be the sunset of his 
race. 

§ 2 

He did not at first envisage his own plight in 
any definite and comprehensible terms. Things 
had happened to him so much of late, his own 
efforts had counted for so little, that he had be- 
come passive and planless. His last scheme had 
been to go round the coast of England as a desert 
dervish giving refined entertainment to his fellow- 
creatures. Fate had quashed that. Fate had 
seen fit to direct him to other destinies, had hur- 
ried him from point to point, and dropped him 
at last upon this little wedge of rock between the 
cataracts. It did not instantly occur to him that 
now it was his turn to play. He had a singular 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


283 


feeling that all must end as a dream ends, that 
presently surely he would be back in the world of 
Grubb and Edna and Bun Hill, that this roar, this 
glittering presence of incessant water, would be 
drawn aside as a curtain is drawn aside after a 
holiday lantern show, and old familiar, customary 
things re-assume their sway. It would be interest- 
ing to tell people how he had seen Niagara. And 
then Kurt’s words came into his head: “ People 
torn away from the people they care for; homes 
smashed, creatures full of life and memories and 
peculiar little gifts — torn to pieces, starved, and 
spoilt.” . . . 

He wondered, half incredulous, if that was in- 
deed true. It was so hard to realise it. Out 
beyond there was it possible that Tom and Jessica 
were also in some dire extremity? that the little 
greengrocer’s shop was no longer standing open, 
with Jessica serving respectfully, warming Tom’s 
ear in sharp asides, or punctually sending out the 
goods ? 

He tried to think what day of the week it was, 
and found he had lost his reckoning. Perhaps it 
was Sunday. If so, were they going to church — 
or, were they hiding, perhaps in bushes? What 
had happened to the landlord, the butcher, and to 
Butteridge and all those people on Dymchurch 
beach? Something, he knew, had happened to 
London — a bombardment. But who had bom- 
barded ? Were Tom and Jessica too being chased 
by strange brown men with long bare swords and 
evil eyes ? He thought of various possible aspects 
of affliction, but presently one phase ousted all 


284 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


the others. Were they getting much to eat ? The 
question haunted him, obsessed him. 

If one was very hungry would one eat rats ? 

It dawned upon him that a peculiar misery that 
oppressed him was not so much anxiety and 
patriotic sorrow as hunger. Of course he was 
hungry ! 

He reflected and turned his steps towards the 
little refreshment shed that stood near the end of 
the ruined bridge. “ Ought to be somethin' ” 

He strolled round it once or twice, and then 
attacked the shutters with his pocket-knife, rein- 
forced presently by a wooden stake he found con- 
veniently near. At last he got a shutter to give, 
and tore it back and stuck in his head. 

“Grub,” he remarked, “anyhow. Least- 
ways ” 

He got at the inside fastening of the shutter 
and had presently this establishment open for his 
exploration. He found several sealed bottles of 
sterilized milk, much mineral water, two tins of 
biscuits and a crock of very stale cakes, cigarettes 
in great quantity but very dry, some rather dry 
oranges, nuts, some tins of canned meat and fruit, 
and plates and knives and forks and glasses suffi- 
cient for several score of people. There was also 
a zinc locker, but he was unable to negotiate the 
padlock of this. 

“Shan't starve,” said Bert, “for a bit, anyhow.” 
He sat on the vendor's seat and regaled himself 
with biscuits and milk, and felt for a moment 
quite contented. 

“Quite restful,” he muttered, munching and 


ON GOAT ISLAND 285 

glancing about him restlessly, “after what I been 
through. 

11 Crikey! Wot a day! Oh! Wot a day!” 

Wonder took possession of him. “Gaw!” he 
cried: “Wot a fight it's been! Smashing up the 
poor fellers ! ’Eadlong ! The airships — the fliers 
and all. I wonder what happened to the Zeppe- 
lin ? . . . And that chap Kurt — I wonder what 
happened to ’im ? ’E was a good sort of chap, was 
Kurt.” 

Some phantom of imperial solicitude floated 
through his mind. “Injia,” he said. . . . 

A more practical interest arose. 

“I wonder if there’s anything to open one of 
these tins of corned beef?” 


§ 3 

After he had feasted, Bert lit a cigarette and sat 
meditative for a time. “ Wonder where Grubb 
is?” he said ; “I do wonder that ! Wonder if any 
of ’em wonder about me?” 

He reverted to his own circumstances. “Des- 
say I shall ’ave to stop on this island for some 
time.” 

He tried to feel at his ease and secure, but pres- 
ently the indefinable restlessness of the social 
animal in solitude distressed him. He began to 
want to look over his shoulder, and, as a correc- 
tive, roused himself to explore the rest of the 
island. 

It was only very slowly that he began to realise 


286 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


the peculiarities of his position, to perceive that the 
breaking down of the arch between Green Island 
and the mainland had cut him off completely from 
the world. Indeed it was only when he came back 
to where the fore-end of the Hohenzollern lay like a 
stranded ship, and was contemplating the shat- 
tered bridge, that this dawned upon him. Even 
then it came with no sort of shock to his mind, a 
fact among a number of other extraordinary and 
unmanageable facts. He stared at the shattered 
cabins of the Hohenzollern and its widow’s garment 
of dishevelled silk for a time, but without any idea 
of its containing any living thing ; it was all so 
twisted and smashed and entirely upside down. 
Then for a while he gazed at the evening sky. A 
cloud haze was now appearing and not an airship 
was in sight. A swallow flew by and snapped 
some invisible victim. “Like a dream,” he 
repeated. 

Then for a time the rapids held his mind. 
“Roaring. It keeps on roaring and splashin’ 
always and always. Keeps on. ...” 

At last his interests became personal. “Wonder 
what I ought to do now?” 

He reflected. “Not an idee,” he said. 

He was chiefly conscious that a fortnight ago he 
had been in Bun Hill with no idea of travel in his 
mind, and that now he was between the Falls of 
Niagara amidst the devastation and ruins of the 
greatest air fight in the world, and that in the 
interval he had been across France, Belgium, Ger- 
many, England, Ireland, and a number of other 
countries. It was an interesting thought and suit- 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


287 


able for conversation, but of no great practical 
utility. “Wonder W I can get orf this?” he 
said. “Wonder if there is a way out ? If not . . . 
rummy !” 

Further reflection decided, “I believe I got my- 
self in a bit of a ’ole coming over that bridge. . . . 

“Any’ow — got me out of the way of them 
Japanesy chaps. Wouldn’t ’ave taken ’em long 
to cut my froat. No. Still ” 

He resolved to return to the point of Luna 
Island. For a long time he stood without stirring, 
scrutinising the Canadian shore and the wreckage 
of hotels and houses and the fallen trees of the 
Victoria Park, pink now in the light of sundown. 
Not a human being was perceptible in that scene 
of headlong destruction. Then he came back to 
the American side of the island, crossed close to 
the crumpled aluminium wreckage of the Hohen - 
zollern to Green Islet, and scrutinised the hopeless 
breach in the further bridge and the water that 
boiled beneath it. Towards Buffalo there was 
still much smoke, and near the position of the 
Niagara railway station the houses were burning 
vigorously. Everything was deserted now, every- 
thing was still. One little abandoned thing lay 
on a transverse path between town and road, 
a crumpled heap of clothes with sprawling 
limbs. . . . 

“’Ave a look round,” said Bert, and taking a 
path that ran through the middle of the island he 
presently discovered the wreckage of the two 
Asiatic aeroplanes that had fallen out of the strug- 
gle that ended the Hohenzollern. 


288 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


With the first he found the wreckage of an aero- 
naut too. 

The machine had evidently dropped vertically 
and was badly knocked about amidst a lot of 
smashed branches in a clump of trees. Its bent 
and broken wings and shattered stays sprawled 
amidst new splintered wood, and its forepeak 
stuck into the ground. The aeronaut dangled 
weirdly head downward among the leaves and 
branches some yards away, and Bert only dis- 
covered him as he turned from the aeroplane. 
In the dusky evening light and stillness — for the 
sun had gone now and the wind had altogether 
fallen — this inverted yellow face was anything 
but a tranquilising object to discover suddenly a 
couple of yards away. A broken branch had run 
clean through the man’s thorax, and he hung, so 
stabbed, looking limp and absurd. In his hand 
he still clutched, with the grip of death, a short 
light rifle. 

For some time Bert stood very still, inspecting 
this thing. 

Then he began to walk away from it, looking 
constantly back at it. 

Presently in an open glade he came to a stop. 

“Gaw !” he whispered, “I don’ like dead bodies 
some’ow ! I’d almost rather that chap was alive.” 

He would not go along the path athwart which 
the Chinaman hung. He felt he would rather not 
have trees round him any more, and that it would 
be more comfortable to be quite close to the 
sociable splash and uproar of the rapids. 

He came upon the second aeroplane in a clear 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


289 


grassy space by the side of the streaming water, 
and it seemed scarcely damaged at all. It looked 
as though it had floated down into a position of 
rest. It lay on its side with one wing in the air. 
There was no aeronaut near it, dead or alive. 
There it lay abandoned, with the water lapping 
about its long tail. 

Bert remained a little aloof from it for a long 
time, looking into the gathering shadows among 
the trees, in the expectation of another Chinaman 
alive or dead. Then very cautiously he ap- 
proached the machine and stood regarding its 
widespread vans, its big steering wheel and empty 
saddle. He did not venture to touch it. 

“I wish that other chap wasn’t there,” he said. 
“I do wish ’e wasn’t there !” 

He saw, a few yards away, something bobbing 
about in an eddy that spun within a projecting 
head of rock. As it went round it seemed to draw 
him unwillingly towards it. . . . 

What could it be ? 

“Blow!” said Bert. “It’s another of ’em.” 

It held him. He told himself that it was the 
other aeronaut that had been shot in the fight and 
fallen out of the saddle as he strove to land. He 
tried to go away, and then it occurred to him that 
he might get a branch or something and push this 
rotating object out into the stream. That would 
leave him with only one dead body to worry about. 
Perhaps he might get along with one. He hesi- 
tated and then with a certain emotion forced him- 
self to do this. He went towards the bushes and 
cut himself a wand and returned to the rocks and 


290 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


clambered out to a corner between the eddy and 
the stream. By that time the sunset was over 
and the bats were abroad — and he was wet with 
perspiration. 

He prodded the floating blue-clad thing with 
his wand, failed, tried again successfully as it 
came round, and as it went out into the stream 
it turned over, the light gleamed on golden hair, 
and — it was Kurt ! 

It was Kurt, white and dead and very calm. 
There was no mistaking him. There was still 
plenty of light for that. The stream took him 
and he seemed to compose himself in its swift 
grip as one who stretches himself to rest. White- 
faced he was now, and all the colour gone out 
of him. 

A feeling of infinite distress swept over Bert as ; 
the body swept out of sight towards the fall. 
“Kurt!” he cried, “Kurt! I didn’t mean to! j 
Kurt ! don’ leave me ’ere ! Don’ leave me !” 

Loneliness and desolation overwhelmed him. 
He gave way. He stood on the rock in the even- 
ing light, weeping and wailing passionately like a 
child. It was as though some link that had held 
him to all these things had broken and gone. He 
was afraid like a child in a lonely room, shame- 
lessly afraid. 

The twilight was closing about him. The trees 
were full now of strange shadows. All the things 
about him became strange and unfamiliar with 
that subtle queerness one feels oftenest in dreams, 
“0 God! I earn’ stand this,” he said, and crept 
back from the rocks to the grass and crouched 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


291 


down, and suddenly wild sorrow for the death of 
Kurt, Kurt the brave, Kurt the kindly, came to 
his help and he broke from whimpering to weep- 
ing. He ceased to crouch ; he sprawled upon the 
grass and clenched an impotent fist. 

“This war,” he cried, “this blarsted foolery of 
a war. 

“0 Kurt ! Lieutenant Kurt ! 

“I done,” he said, “I done. I've 'ad all I want, 
and more than I want. The world's all rot, and 
there ain't no sense in it. The night's coming. 
... If 'E comes after me — 'E can't come after 
me — 'E can't ! . . . 

“If 'E comes after me, I'll fro' myself into the 
water.” . . . 

Presently he was talking again in a low under- 
tone. 

“There ain't nothing to be afraid of reely. It's 
jest imagination. Poor old Kurt — he thought it 
would happen. Prevision like. 'E never gave me 
that letter or tole me who the lady was. It's like 
what 'e said — people tore away from everything 
they belonged to — everywhere. Exactly like 
what 'e said. . . . 'Ere I am cast away — 
thousands of miles from Edna or Grubb or any of 
my lot — like a plant tore up by the roots. . . . 
And every war's been like this, only I 'adn't the 
sense to understand it. Always. All sorts of 'oles 
and corners chaps 'ave died in. And people 'adn't 
the sense to understand, 'adn't the sense to feel 
it and stop it. Thought war was fine. My 
Gawd ! . . . 

“Dear old Edna. She was a fair bit of all right 


292 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


— she was. That time we 'ad a boat at King- 
ston. . . . 

“I bet — I'll see 'er again yet. Won't be my 
fault if I don't." . . . 

§ 4 

Suddenly, on the very verge of this heroic reso- 
lution, Bert became rigid with terror. Something 
was creeping towards him through the grass. 
Something was creeping and halting and creeping 
again towards him through the dim, dark grass. 
The night was electrical with horror. For a time 
everything was still. Bert ceased to breathe. It 
could not be. No, it was too small ! 

It advanced suddenly upon him with a rush, 
with a little meawling cry and tail erect. It 
rubbed its head against him and purred. It was 
a tiny, skinny little kitten. 

“Gaw, Pussy! 'ow you frightened me!" said 
Bert, with drops of perspiration on his brow. 

§ 5 

He sat with his back to a tree stump all that 
night, holding the kitten in his arms. His mind 
was tired, and he talked or thought coherently no 
longer. Towards dawn he dozed. 

When he awoke, he was stiff but in better heart, 
and the kitten slept warmly and reassuringly in- 
side his jacket. And fear, he found, had gone 
from amidst the trees. 

He stroked the kitten, and the little creature 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


293 


woke up to excessive fondness and purring. “ You 
want some milk/’ said Bert. “ That’s what you 
want. And I could do with a bit of brekker too.” 

He yawned and stood up, with the kitten on his 
shoulder, and stared about him, recalling the cir- 
cumstances of the previous day, the grey, immense 
happenings. 

“Mus’ do something,” he said. 

He turned towards the trees, and was presently 
contemplating the dead aeronaut again. The kit- 
ten he held companionably against his neck. The 
body was horrible, but not nearly so horrible as it 
had been at twilight, and now the limbs were 
limper and the gun had slipped to the ground and 
lay half hidden in the grass. 

“I suppose we ought to bury ’im, Kitty,” said 
Bert, and looked helplessly at the rocky soil about 
him. “We got to stay on the island with ’im.” 

It was some time before he could turn away and 
go on towards that provision shed. “ Brekker 
first,” he said, “anyhow,” stroking the kitten on 
his shoulder. She rubbed his cheek affectionately 
with her furry little face and presently nibbled at 
his ear. “Wan’ some milk, eh?” he said, and 
turned his back on the dead man as though he 
mattered nothing. 

He was puzzled to find the door of the shed 
open, though he had closed and latched it very 
carefully overnight, and he found also some dirty 
plates he had not noticed before on the bench. 
He discovered that the hinges of the tin locker 
were unscrewed and that it could be opened. He 
had not observed this overnight. 


294 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


“Silly of me !" said Bert. “'Ere I was puzzlin’ 
and whackin' away at the padlock, never notic- 
ing." It had been used apparently as an ice- 
chest, but it contained nothing now but the 
remains of half-a-dozen boiled chickens, some 
ambiguous substance that might once have been 
butter, and a singularly unappetising smell. He 
closed the lid again carefully. 

He gave the kitten some milk in a dirty plate 
and sat watching its busy little tongue for a time. 
Then he was moved to make an inventory of the 
provisions. There were six bottles of milk un- 
opened and one opened, sixty bottles of mineral 
water and a large stock of syrups, about two 
thousand cigarettes and upwards of a hundred 
cigars, nine oranges, two unopened tins of corned 
beef and one opened, and five large tins California 
peaches. He jotted it down on a piece of paper 

“'Ain't much solid food," h6 said. “Still 

A fortnight, say ! 

“ Anything might happen in a fortnight." 

He gave the kitten a small second helping and 
a scrap of beef and then went down with the little 
creature running after him, tail erect and in high 
spirits, to look at the remains of the Hohenzollern. 
It had shifted in the night and seemed on the whole 
more firmly grounded on Green T s3and than before. 
From it his eye went to the shattered bridge and 
then across to the still desolation of Niagara city. 
Nothing moved over there but a number of crows. 
They were busy with the engineer he had seen cut 
down on the previous day. He saw no dogs, but 
he heard one howling. 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


295 


“We got to get out of this some’ow, Kitty,” he 
said. “That milk won’t last for ever — not at the 
rate you lap it.” 

He regarded the sluice-like flood before him. 
“ Plenty of water,” he said. “ Wont be drink we 
shall want.” 

He decided to make a careful exploration of the 
island. Presently he came to a locked gate la- 
belled “Biddle Stairs,” and clambered over to dis- 
cover a steep old wooden staircase leading down 
the face of the cliff amidst a vast and increasing 
uproar of waters. He left the kitten above and 
descended these, and discovered with a thrill of 
hope a path leading among the rocks at the foot 
of the roaring downrush of the Centre Fall. Per- 
haps this was a sort of way ! 

It led him only to the choking and deafening ex- 
perience of the Cave of the Winds, and after he had 
spent a quarter of an hour in a partially stupefied 
condition flattened between solid rock and nearly 
as solid waterfall, he decided that this was after 
all no practicable route to Canada and retraced 
his steps. As he reascended the Biddle Stairs, he 
heard what he decided at last must be a sort of 
echo, a sound of some one walking about on the 
gravel paths above. WTien he got to the top, the 
place was as solitary as before. 

Thence he made his way, with the kitten skir- 
mishing along beside him in the grass, to a staircase 
that led to a lump of projecting rock that enfiladed 
the huge green majesty of the Horseshoe Fall. He 
stood there for some time in silence. 

“You wouldn’t think,” he said at last, “there 


296 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


was so much water. . . . This roarin' and 
splashing it gets on one's nerves at last. . . . 
Sounds like people talking. . . . Sounds like 
people going about. . . . Sounds like anything 
you fancy." 

He retired up the staircase again. “I s’pose I 
shall keep on goin' round this blessed island," he 
said drearily. “ Round and round and round." 

He found himself presently beside the less dam- 
aged Asiatic aeroplane again. He stared at it and 
the kitten smelt it. “ Broke!" he said. 

He looked up with a convulsive start. 

Advancing slowly towards him out from among 
the trees were two tall gaunt figures. They were 
blackened and tattered and bandaged ; the hind- 
most one limped and had his head swathed in 
white, but the foremost one still carried himself as 
a Prince should do, for all that his left arm was 
in a sling and one side of his face scalded a livid 
crimson. He was the Prince Karl Albert, the War 
Lord, the “ German Alexander," and the man 
behind him was the bird-faced man whose cabin ; 
had once been taken from him and given to Bert. 

§ 6 

With that apparition began a new phase of Goat 
Island in Bert's experience. He ceased to be a 
solitary representative of humanity in a vast and 
violent and incomprehensible universe, and be- 
came once more a social creature, a man in a world 
of other men. For an instant these two were ter- 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


297 


rible, then they seemed sweet and desirable as 
brothers. They too were in this scrape with him, 
marooned and puzzled. He wanted extremely to 
hear exactly what had happened to them. What 
mattered it if one was a Prince and both were 
foreign soldiers, if neither perhaps had adequate 
English ? His native Cockney freedom flowed too 
generously for him to think of that, and surely 
the Asiatic fleets had purged all such trivial dif- 
ferences. “Ul-Zo/” he said; “W did you get 
'ere?” 

“It is the Englishman who brought us the But- 
teridge machine,” said the bird-faced officer in 
German, and then in a tone of horror, as Bert 
advanced, “ Salute !” and again louder, “Salute!” 

“Gaw!” said Bert, and stopped with a second 
comment under his breath. He stared and saluted 
awkwardly and became at once a masked defensive 
thing with whom co-operation was impossible. 

For a time these two perfected modern aristo- 
crats stood regarding the difficult problem of the 
Anglo-Saxon citizen, that ambiguous citizen who, 
obeying some mysterious law in his blood, would 
neither drill nor be a democrat. Bert was by no 
means a beautiful object, but in some inexplicable 
way he looked resistant. He wore his cheap suit 
of serge, now showing many signs of wear, and its 
loose fit made him seem sturdier than he was; 
above his disengaging face was a white German 
cap that was altogether too big for him, and his 
trousers were crumpled up his legs and their ends 
tucked into the rubber highlows of a deceased 
German aeronaut. He looked an inferior, though 


298 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


by no means an easy inferior, and instinctively 
they hated him. 

The Prince pointed to the flying-machine and 
said something in broken English that Bert took 
for German and failed to understand. He inti- 
mated as much. 

“Dummer Kerl!” said the bird-faced officer 
from among his bandages. 

The Prince pointed again with his undamaged 
hand. “You verstehen dis drachenflieger ?” 

Bert began to comprehend the situation. He 
regarded the Asiatic machine. The habits of Bun 
Hill returned to him. “IPs a foreign make,” he 
said ambiguously. 

The two Germans consulted. “You are — an 
expert?” said the Prince. 

“We reckon to repair,” said Bert, in the exact 
manner of Grubb. 

The Prince sought in his vocabulary. “Is dat,” 
he said, “goot to fly?” 

Bert reflected and scratched his cheek slowly. 
“I got to look at it,” he replied. . . . “IPs ’ad 
rough usage !” 

He made a sound with his teeth he had also ac- 
quired from Grubb, put his hands in his trouser 
pockets, and strolled back to the machine. Typi- 
cally Grubb chewed something, but Bert could 
chew only imaginatively. “Three days’ work in 
this,” he said, teething. For the first time it 
dawned on him that there were possibilities in 
this machine. It was evident that the wing that 
lay on the ground was badly damaged. The three 
stays that held it rigid had snapped across a ridge 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


299 


of rock and there was also a strong possibility of 
the engine being badly damaged. The wing hook 
on that side was also askew, but probably that 
would not affect the flight. Beyond that there 
probably wasn’t much the matter. Bert scratched 
his cheek again and contemplated the broad sunlit 
waste of the Upper Rapids. “We might make a 
job of this. . . . You leave it to me.” 

He surveyed it intently again, and the Prince 
and his officer watched him. In Bun Hill Bert 
and Grubb had developed to a very high pitch 
among the hiring stock a method of repair by 
substituting ; they substituted bits of other 
machines. A machine that was too utterly and 
obviously done for even to proffer for hire, had 
nevertheless still capital value. It became a 
sort of quarry for nuts and screws and wheels, 
bars and spokes, chain-links and the like ; a mine 
of ill-fitting “parts” to replace the defects of 
machines still current. And back among the 
trees was a second Asiatic aeroplane. . . . 

The kitten caressed Bert’s airship boots un- 
heeded. 

“Mend dat drachenflieger,” said the Prince. 

“If I do mend it,” said Bert, struck by a new 
thought, “none of us ain’t to be trusted to fly it.” 

“I vill fly it,” said the Prince. 

“Very likely break your neck,” said Bert, 
after a pause. 

The Prince did not understand him and dis- 
regarded what he said. He pointed his gloved 
finger to the machine and turned to the bird- 
faced officer with some remark in German. The 


300 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


officer answered and the Prince responded with 
a sweeping gesture towards the sky. Then he 
spoke — it seemed eloquently. Bert watched 
him and guessed his meaning. “Much more 
likely to break your neck,” he said. “'Owever. 
'Ere goes.” 

He began to pry about the saddle and engine 
of the drachenflieger in search for tools. Also 
he wanted some black oily stuff for his hands and 
face. For the first rule in the art of repairing, 
as it was known to the firm of Grubb and Small- 
ways, was to get your hands and face thoroughly 
and conclusively blackened. Also he took off 
his jacket and waistcoat and put his cap care- 
fully to the back of his head in order to facili- 
tate scratching. 

The Prince and the officer seemed disposed to 
watch him, but he succeeded in making it clear 
to them that this would inconvenience him and 
that he had to “puzzle out a bit” before he could 
get to work. They thought him over, but his 
shop experience had given him something of the 
authoritative way of the expert with common 
men. And at last they went away. Thereupon 
he went straight to the second aeroplane, got the 
aeronaut's gun and ammunition and hid them 
in a clump of nettles close at hand. “That's 
all right,” said Bert, and then proceeded to a care- 
ful inspection of the debris of the wings in the 
trees. Then he went back to the first aeroplane 
to compare the two. The Bun Hill method was 
quite possibly practicable if there was nothing 
hopeless or incomprehensible in the engine. 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


301 


The Germans returned presently to find him 
already generously smutty and touching and 
testing knobs and screws and levers with an ex- 
pression of profound sagacity. When the bird- 
faced officer addressed a remark to him, he waved 
him aside with, “Nong comprong. Shut it! 
It's no good.” 

Then he had an idea. “ Dead chap back there 
wants burying,” he said, jerking a thumb over his 
shoulder. 


§ 7 

With the appearance of these two men Bert’s 
whole universe had changed again. A curtain 
fell before the immense and terrible desolation 
that had overwhelmed him. He was in a world 
of three people, a minute human world that 
nevertheless filled his brain with eager specula- 
tions and schemes and cunning ideas. What 
were they thinking of? What did they think 
of him ? What did they mean to do ? A hundred 
busy threads interlaced in his mind as he pottered 
studiously over the Asiatic aeroplane. New 
ideas came up like bubbles in soda water. 

“Gaw!” he said suddenly. He had just ap- 
preciated as a special aspect of this irrational 
injustice of fate that these two men were alive 
and that Kurt was dead. All the crew of the 
Hohenzollern were shot or burnt or smashed or 
drowned, and these two lurking in the padded 
forward cabin d escaped. 

“I suppose ’e thinks it’s ’is bloomin’ Star,” he 


302 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


muttered, and found himself uncontrollably ex- 
asperated. 

He stood up, facing round to the two men. 
They were standing side by side regarding him. 

“ It’s no good,” he said, “ starin' at me. You 
only put me out.” And then seeing they did 
not understand, he advanced towards them, 
wrench in hand. It occurred to him as he did 
so that the Prince was really a very big and 
powerful and serene-looking person. But he 
said, nevertheless, pointing through the trees, 
“dead man!” 

The bird-faced man intervened with a reply in 
German. 

“Dead man!” said Bert to him. “There.” 

He had great difficulty in inducing them to 
inspect the dead Chinaman, and at last led them 
to him. Then they made it evident that they 
proposed that he, as a common person below the 
rank of officer, should have the sole and undivided 
privilege of disposing of the body by dragging 
it to the water's edge. There was some heated 
gesticulation, and at last the bird-faced officer 
abased himself to help. Together they dragged 
the limp and now swollen Asiatic through the 
trees, and after a rest or so — for he trailed very 
heavily — dumped him into the westward rapid. 
Bert returned to his expert investigation of the 
flying-machine at last with aching arms and in 
a state of gloomy rebellion. “Brasted cheek!” 
he said. “One'd think I was one of 'is beastly 
German slaves ! 

“Prancing beggar !” 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


303 


And then he fell speculating what would 
happen when the flying-machine was repaired — 
if it could be repaired. 

The two Germans went away again, and after 
some reflection Bert removed several nuts, re- 
sumed his jacket and vest, pocketed those nuts 
and his tools and hid the set of tools from the 
second aeroplane in the fork of a tree. “ Right 
O,” he said, as he jumped down after the last of 
these precautions. The Prince and his companion 
reappeared as he returned to the machine by the 
water’s edge. The Prince surveyed his progress 
for a time, and then went towards the Parting 
of the Waters and stood with folded arms gazing 
upstream in profound thought. The bird-faced 
officer came up to Bert, heavy with a sentence 
in English. 

“Go,” he said with a helping gesture, “und 
eat.” 

When Bert got to the refreshment shed, he 
found all the food had vanished except one 
measured ration of corned beef and three biscuits. 
He regarded this with open eyes and mouth. 
The kitten appeared from under the vendor’s 
seat with an ingratiating purr. “Of course!” 
said Bert. “Why! where’s your milk?” 

He accumulated wrath for a moment or so, then 
seized the plate in one hand, and the biscuits in 
another, and went in search of the Prince, breath- 
ing vile words anent “grub” and his intimate 
interior. He approached without saluting. 

“’Ere!” he said fiercely. “Whad the devil’s 
this?” 


304 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


An entirely unsatisfactory altercation followed. 
Bert expounded the Bun Hill theory of the re- 
lations of grub to efficiency in English, the bird- 
faced man replied with points about nations and 
discipline in German. The Prince, having made 
an estimate of Bert’s quality and physique, 
suddenly hectored. He gripped Bert by the 
shoulder and shook him, making his pockets 
rattle, shouted something to him, and flung him 
struggling back. He hit him as though he was 
a German private. Bert went back, white and 
scared, but resolved by all his Cockney standards 
upon one thing. He was bound in honour to 
“go for” the Prince. “Gaw !” he gasped, button- 
ing his jacket. 

“Now,” cried the Prince, “Vil you go?” and 
then catching the heroic gleam in Bert’s eye, drew 
his sword. 

The bird-faced officer intervened, saying some- 
thing in German and pointing skyward. 

Far away in the south-west appeared a Japanese 
airship coming fast toward them. Their conflict 
ended at that. The Prince was first to grasp the 
situation and lead the retreat. All three scuttled 
like rabbits for the trees, and ran to and for cover 
until they found a hollow in which the grass grew 
rank. There they all squatted within six yards 
of one another. They sat in this place for a long 
time, up to their necks in the grass and watching 
through the branches for the airship. Bert had 
dropped some of his corned beef, but he found the 
biscuits in his hand and ate them quietly. The 
monster came nearly overhead and then went 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


305 


away to Niagara and dropped beyond the power- 
works. When it was near, they all kept silence, 
and then presently they fell into an argument 
that was robbed perhaps of immediate explosive 
effect only by their failure to understand one 
another. 

It was Bert began the talking and he talked on 
regardless of what they understood or failed to 
understand. But his voice must have conveyed 
his cantankerous intentions. 

“You want that machine done,” he said first, 
“you better keep your 'ands off me!” 

They disregarded that and he repeated it. 

Then he expanded his idea and the spirit of 
speech took hold of him. “You think you got 
'old of a chap you can kick and 'it like you do 
your private soldiers — you're jolly well mistaken. 
See? I've 'ad about enough of you and your 
antics. I been thinking you over, you and your 
war and your Empire and all the rot of it. Rot 
it is ! It's you Germans made all the trouble 
in Europe first and last. And all for nothin'. 
Jest silly prancing ! Jest because you've got the 
uniforms and flags ! 'Ere I was — I didn't want 
to 'ave anything to do with you. I jest didn't 
care a 'eng at all about you. Then you get 'old 
of me — steal me practically — and 'ere I am, 
thousands of miles away from 'ome and every- 
thing, and all your silly fleet smashed up to rags. 
And you want to go on prancin' now! Not if I 
know it ! 

“Look at the mischief you done ! Look at the 
way you smashed up New York — the people 


306 THE WAR IN THE AIR 

you killed, the stuff you wasted. Can’t you 
learn ? ” 

“Dummer Kerl!” said the bird-faced man 
suddenly in a tone of concentrated malignity, 
glaring under his bandages. “Esel!” 

“That’s German for silly ass! — I know. But 
who’s the silly ass — ’im or me ? When I was 
a kid, I used to read penny dreadfuls about ’avin 
adventures and being a great c’mander and all 
that rot. I stowed it. But what’s ’e got in ’is 
head ? Rot about Napoleon, rot about Alexander, 
rot about ’is blessed family and ’im and Gord and 
David and all that. Any one who wasn’t a 
dressed-up silly fool of a Prince could ’ave told 
all this was goin’ to ’appen. There was us in 
Europe all at sixes and sevens with our silly flags 
and our silly newspapers raggin’ us up against 
each other and keepin’ us apart, and there was 
China as solid as a cheese, with millions and 
millions of men only wantin’ a bit of science and 
a bit of enterprise to be as good as all of us. You 
thought they couldn’t get at you. And then 
they got flying-machines. And bif ! — ’ere we 
are. Why, when they didn’t go on making guns 
and armies in China, we went and poked ’em up 
until they did. They ’ad to give us this lickin’ 
they’ve give us. We wouldn’t be ’appy till they 
did, and as I say, ’ere we are !” 

The bird-faced officer shouted to him to be 
quiet, and then began a conversation with the 
Prince. 

“British citizen,” said Bert. “You ain’t 
obliged to listen, but I ain’t obliged to shut up.” 



“ Then a boy appeared . . . but he would not understand 

Bert’s hail ” 



ON GOAT ISLAND 


307 


And for some time he continued his dissertation 
upon Imperialism, militarism, and international 
politics. But their talking put him out, and for 
a time he was certainly merely repeating abusive 
terms, “prancin' nincompoops" and the like, old 
terms and new. 

Then suddenly he remembered his essential 
grievance. “'Owever, look 'ere — 'ere ! — the 
thing I started this talk about is where's that 
food there was in that shed ? That's what I want 
to know. Where you put it?" 

He paused. They went on talking in German. 
He repeated his question. They disregarded him. 
He asked a third time in a manner insupportably 
aggressive. 

There fell a tense silence. For some seconds 
the three regarded one another. The Prince eyed 
Bert steadfastly, and Bert quailed under his eye. 
Slowly the Prince rose to his feet and the bird- 
faced officer jerked up beside him. Bert remained 
squatting. 

“Be quaiat," said the Prince. 

Bert perceived this was no moment for elo- 
quence. 

The two Germans regarded him as he crouched 
there. Death for a moment seemed near. 

Then the Prince turned away and the two of 
them went towards the flying-machine. 

“Gaw !" whispered Bert, and then uttered under 
his breath one single word of abuse. He sat 
crouched together for perhaps three minutes, then 
he sprang to his feet and went off towards the 
Chinese aeronaut's gun hidden among the weeds. 


308 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


§ 8 

There was no pretence after that moment that 
Bert was under the orders of the Prince or that he 
was going on with the repairing of the flying- 
machine. The two Germans took possession of 
that and set to work upon it. Bert, with his new 
weapon, went off to the neighbourhood of Terrapin 
Rock, and there sat down to examine it. It was 
a short rifle with a big cartridge and a nearly 
full magazine. He took out the cartridges care- 
fully and then tried the trigger and fittings until 
he felt sure he had the use of it. He reloaded 
carefully. Then he remembered he was hungry 
and went off, gun under his arm, to hunt 
in and about the refreshment shed. He had the 
sense to perceive that he must not show himself 
with the gun to the Prince and his companion. 
So long as they thought him unarmed they would 
leave him alone, but there was no knowing what 
the Napoleonic person might do if he saw Bert's 
weapon. Also he did not go near them because 
he knew that within himself boiled a reservoir 
of rage and fear that he wanted to shoot these 
two men. He wanted to shoot them, and he 
thought that to shoot them would be a quite 
horrible thing to do. The two sides of his incon- 
sistent civilisation warred within him. 

Near the shed the kitten turned up again, ob- 
viously keen for milk. This greatly enhanced his 
own angry sense of hunger. He began to talk 
as he hunted about, and presently stood still, 
shouting insults. He talked of war and pride and 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


309 


Imperialism. “Any other Prince but you would 
have died with his men and his ship!” he cried. 

The two Germans at the machine heard his 
voice going ever and again amidst the clamour of 
the waters. Their eyes met and they smiled 
slightly. 

He was disposed for a time to sit in the refresh- 
ment shed waiting for them, but then it occurred 
to him that so he might get them both at close 
quarters. He strolled off presently to the point 
of Luna Island to think the situation out. 

It had seemed a comparatively simple one at 
first, but as he turned it over in his mind its 
possibilities increased and multiplied. Both these 
men had swords, — had either a revolver ? 

Also, if he shot them both, he might never find 
the food ! 

So far he had been going about with this gun 
under his arm, and a sense of lordly security in 
his mind, but what if they saw the gun and de- 
cided to ambush him? Goat Island is nearly all 
cover, trees, rocks, thickets, and irregularities. 

Why not go and murder them both now? 

“I carn’t,” said Bert, dismissing that. “I got 
to be worked up.” 

But it was a mistake to get right away from 
them. That suddenly became clear. He ought 
to keep them under observation, ought to “ scout” 
them. Then he would be able to see what they 
were doing, whether either of them had a revolver, 
where they had hidden the food. He would be 
better able to determine what they meant to do 
to him. If he didn’t “ scout” them, presently 


310 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


they would begin to “scout” him. This seemed 
so eminently reasonable that he acted upon it 
forthwith. He thought over his costume and 
threw his collar and the tell-tale aeronaut’s white 
cap into the water far below. He turned his coat 
collar up to hide any gleam of his dirty shirt. 
The tools and nuts in his pockets were disposed 
to clank, but he rearranged them and wrapped 
some letters and his pocket-handkerchief about 
them. He started off circumspectly and noise- 
lessly, listening and peering at every step. As he 
drew near his antagonists, much grunting and 
creaking served to locate them. He discovered 
them engaged in what looked like a wrestling 
match with the Asiatic flying-machine. Their 
coats were off, their swords laid aside, they were 
working magnificently. Apparently they were 
turning it round and were having a good deal 
of difficulty with the long tail among the trees. 
He dropped flat at the sight of them and wriggled 
into a little hollow, and so lay watching their 
exertions. Ever and again, to pass the time, he 
would cover one or other of them with his gun. 

He found them quite interesting to watch, so 
interesting that at times he came near shouting to 
advise them. He perceived that when they had 
the machine turned round, they would then be in 
immediate want of the nuts and tools he carried. 
Then they would come after him. They would 
certainly conclude he had them or had hidden 
them. Should he hide his gun and do a deal 
for food with these tools? He felt he would 
not be able to part with the gun again now he 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


311 


had once felt its reassuring company. The 
kitten turned up again and made a great fuss with 
him and licked and bit his ear. 

The sun clambered to midday, and once that 
morning he saw, though the Germans did not, an 
Asiatic airship very far to the south, going swiftly 
eastward. 

At last the flying-machine was turned and stood 
poised on its wheel, with its hooks pointing up the 
Rapids. The two officers wiped their faces, re- 
sumed jackets and swords, spoke and bore them- 
selves like men who congratulated themselves on 
a good laborious morning. Then they went off 
briskly towards the refreshment shed, the Prince 
leading. Bert became active in pursuit ; but he 
found it impossible to stalk them quickly enough 
and silently enough to discover the hiding-place 
of the food. He found them, when he came into 
sight of them again, seated with their backs 
against the shed, plates on knee, and a tin of 
corned beef and a plateful of biscuits between 
them. They seemed in fairly good spirits, and 
once the Prince laughed. At this vision of eating 
Bert’s plans gave way. Fierce hunger carried 
him. He appeared before them suddenly at 
a distance of perhaps twenty yards, gun in 
hand. 

“’Ands up !” he said in a hard, ferocious voice. 

The Prince hesitated, and then up went two 
pairs of hands. The gun had surprised them 
both completely. 

“Stand up,” said Bert. . . . “Drop that fork !” 

They obeyed again. 


312 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


“What ilex’?” said Bert to himself. “’Orf 
stage, I suppose. That way,” he said. “Go!” 

The Prince obeyed with remarkable alacrity. 
When he reached the head of the clearing, he said 
something quickly to the bird-faced man and they 
both, with an entire lack of dignity, ran! 

Bert was struck with an exasperating after- 
thought. 

“Gord !” he cried with infinite vexation. “Why ! 
I ought to ’ave took their swords! ’Ere!” 

But the Germans were already out of sight, and 
no doubt taking cover among the trees. Bert 
fell back upon imprecations, then he went up to 
the shed, cursorily examined the possibility of a 
flank attack, put his gun handy, and set to work, 
with a convulsive listening pause before each 
mouthful, on the Prince’s plate of corned beef. 
He had finished that up and handed its gleanings 
to the kitten and he was falling-to on the second 
plateful, when the plate broke in his hand ! He 
stared, with the fact slowly creeping upon him 
that an instant before he had heard a crack among 
the thickets. Then he sprang to his feet, snatched 
up his gun in one hand and the tin of corned 
beef in the other, and fled round the shed to the 
other side of the clearing. As he did so came 
a second crack from the thickets, and something 
went phwit! by his ear. 

He didn’t stop running until he was in what 
seemed to him a strongly defensible position near 
Luna Island. Then he took cover, panting, and 
crouched expectant. 

“They got a revolver after all 1” he panted. . . . 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


313 


“ Wonder if they got two ? If they ’ave — Gord ! 
I’m done ! 

“Where’s the kitten? Finishin’ up that corned 
beef, I suppose. Little beggar!” 


§ 9 

So it was that war began upon Goat Island. It 
lasted a day and a night, the longest day and the 
longest night in Bert’s life. He had to lie close 
and listen and watch. Also he had to scheme 
what he should do. It was clear now that he 
had to kill these two men if he could, and that 
if they could, they would kill him. The prize was 
first food and then the flying-machine and the 
doubtful privilege of trying to ride it. If one failed, 
one would certainly be killed; if one succeeded, 
one would get away somewhere over there. For 
a time Bert tried to imagine what it was like over 
there. His mind ran over possibilities, deserts, 
angry Americans, Japanese, Chinese — perhaps 
Bed Indians! (Were there still Bed Indians?) 

“Got to take what comes,” said Bert. “No 
way out of it that I can see !” 

Was that voices? He realised that his atten- 
tion was wandering. For a time all his senses were 
very alert. The uproar of the Falls was very 
confusing, and it mixed in all sorts of sounds, like 
feet walking, like voices talking, like shouts and 
cries. 

“Silly great catarac’,” said Bert. “There 
ain’t no sense in it, failin’ and failin’.” 


314 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


Never mind that now! What were the Ger- 
mans doing ? 

Would they go back to the flying-machine? 
They couldn’t do anything with it, because he had 
those nuts and screws and the wrench and other 
tools. But suppose they found the second set 
of tools he had hidden in a tree ! He had hidden 
the things well, of course, but they might find 
them. One wasn’t sure, of course — one wasn’t 
sure. He tried to remember just exactly how he 
had hidden those tools. He tried to persuade 
himself they were certainly and surely hidden, 
but his memory began to play antics. Had he 
really left the handle of the wrench sticking out, 
shining out at the fork of the branch? 

Ssh! What was that? Some one stirring in 
those bushes? Up went an expectant muzzle. 
No! Where was the kitten? No! It was just 
imagination, not even the kitten. 

The Germans would certainly miss and hunt 
about for the tools and nuts and screws he carried 
in his pockets ; that was clear. Then they would 
decide he had them and come for him. He had 
only to remain still under cover, therefore, and 
he would get them. Was there any flaw in that? 
Would they take off more removable parts of the 
flying-machine and then lie up for him? No, 
they wouldn’t do that, because they were two 
to one; they would have no apprehension of his 
getting off in the flying-machine, and no sound 
reason for supposing he would approach it, and 
so they would do nothing to damage or disable 
it. That, he decided, was clear. But suppose 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


315 


they lay up for him by the food. Well, that they 
wouldn’t do, because they would know he had 
this corned beef; there was enough in this can 
to last, with moderation, several days. Of 
course they might try to tire him out instead of 
attacking him 

He roused himself with a start. He had just 
grasped the real weakness of his position. He 
might go to sleep ! 

It needed but ten minutes under the suggestion 
of that idea before he realised that he was going to 
sleep ! 

He rubbed his eyes and handled his gun. He 
had never before realised the intensely soporific 
effect of the American sun, of the American air, 
the drowsy, sleep-compelling uproar of Niagara. 
Hitherto these things had on the whole seemed 
stimulating. . . . 

If he had not eaten so much and eaten it so fast, 
he would not be so heavy. Are vegetarians always 
bright? . . . 

He roused himself with a jerk again. 

If he didn’t do something, he would fall asleep, 
and if he fell asleep, it was ten to one they would 
find him snoring, and finish him forthwith. If 
he sat motionless and noiseless, he would inevit- 
ably sleep. It was better, he told himself, to 
take even the risks of attacking than that. This 
sleep trouble, he felt, was going to beat him, 
must beat him in the end. They were all right; 
one could sleep and the other could watch. That, 
come to think of it, was what they would always 
do ; one would do anything they wanted done, the 


316 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


other would lie under cover near at hand, ready 
to shoot. They might even trap him like that. 
One might act as a decoy. 

That set him thinking of decoys. What a fool 
he had been to throw his cap away. It would 
have been invaluable on a stick — especially at 
night. 

He found himself wishing for a drink. He 
settled that for a time by putting a pebble in his 
mouth. And then the sleep craving returned. 

It became clear to him he must attack. 

Like many great generals before him, he found 
his baggage, that is to say his tin of corned beef, 
a serious impediment to mobility. At last he 
decided to put the beef loose in his pocket and 
abandon the tin. It was not perhaps an ideal 
arrangement, but one must make sacrifices when 
one is campaigning. He crawled perhaps ten 
yards, and then for a time the possibilities of the 
situation paralysed him. 

The afternoon was still. The roar of the 
cataract simply threw up that immense stillness 
in relief. He was doing his best to contrive the 
death of two better men than himself. Also they 
were doing their best to contrive his. What, 
behind this silence, were they doing. 

Suppose he came upon them suddenly and fired 
and missed? 

§ 10 

He crawled, and halted listening, and crawled 
again until nightfall, and no doubt the German 
Alexander and his lieutenant did the same. A 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


317 


large scale map of Goat Island marked with red 
and blue lines to show these strategic movements 
would no doubt have displayed much interlacing, 
but as a matter of fact neither side saw anything 
of the other throughout that age-long day of 
tedious alertness. Bert never knew how near 
he got to them nor how far he kept from them. 
Night found him no longer sleepy, but athirst, 
and near the American Fall. He was inspired by 
the idea that his antagonists might be in the 
wreckage of the Hohenzollern cabins that was 
jammed against Green Island. He became enter- 
prising, broke from any attempt to conceal him- 
self, and went across the little bridge at the 
double. He found nobody. It was his first 
visit to these huge fragments of airships, and for 
a time he explored them curiously in the dim 
light. He discovered the forward cabin was 
nearly intact, with its door slanting downward 
and a corner under water. He crept in, drank, 
and then was struck by the brilliant idea of shut- 
ting the door and sleeping on it. 

But now he could not sleep at all. 

He nodded towards morning and woke up to 
find it fully day. He breakfasted on corned beef 
and water, and sat for a long time appreciative 
of the security of his position. At last he became 
enterprising and bold. He would, he decided, 
settle this business forthwith, one way or the 
other. He was tired of all this crawling. He set 
out in the morning sunshine, gun in hand, scarcely 
troubling to walk softly. He went round the 
refreshment shed without finding any one, and 


318 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


then through the trees towards the flying-machine. 
He came upon the bird-faced man sitting on the 
ground with his back against a tree, bent up over 
his folded arms, sleeping, his bandage very much 
over one eye. 

Bert stopped abruptly and stood perhaps 
fifteen yards away, gun in hand ready. Where 
was the Prince? Then, sticking out at the side 
of the tree beyond, he saw a shoulder. Bert took 
five deliberate paces to the left. The great man 
became visible, leaning up against the trunk, 
pistol in one hand and sword in the other, and 
yawning — yawning. You can’t shoot a yawn- 
ing man, Bert found. He advanced upon his 
antagonist with his gun levelled, some foolish 
fancy of “ hands up!” in his mind. The Prince 
became aware of him, the yawning mouth shut 
like a trap and he stood stiffly up. Bert stopped, 
silent. For a moment the two regarded one 
another. 

Had the Prince been a wise man he would, I 
suppose, have dodged behind the tree. Instead, 
he gave vent to a shout, and raised pistol and 
sword. At that, like an automaton, Bert pulled 
his trigger. 

It was his first experience of an oxygen-contain- 
ing bullet. A great flame spurted from the 
middle of the Prince, a blinding flare, and there 
came a thud like the firing of a gun. Something 
hot and wet struck Bert’s face. Then through 
a whirl of blinding smoke and steam he saw limbs 
and a collapsing, burst body fling themselves to 
earth. 


ON GOAT ISLAND 


319 


Bert was so astonished that he stood agape, 
and the bird-faced officer might have cut him to 
the earth without a struggle. But instead the 
bird-faced officer was running away through the 
undergrowth, dodging as he went. Bert roused 
himself to a brief ineffectual pursuit, but he had 
no stomach for further killing. He returned to 
the mangled, scattered thing that had so recently 
been the great Prince Karl Albert. He surveyed 
the scorched and splashed vegetation about it. 
He made some speculative identifications. He 
advanced gingerly and picked up the hot revolver, 
to find all its chambers strained and burst. He 
became aware of a cheerful and friendly presence. 
He was greatly shocked that one so young should 
see so frightful a scene. 

“’Ere, Kitty,” he said, “this ain’t no place for 
you.” 

He made three strides across the devastated 
area, captured the kitten neatly, and went his 
way towards the shed, with her purring loudly 
on his shoulder. 

“ You don’t seem to mind,” he said. 

For a time he fussed about the shed, and at last 
discovered the rest of the provisions hidden in the 
roof. “Seems ’ard,” he said, as he administered 
a saucerful of milk, “when you get three men in 
a ’ole like this, they can’t work together. But 
’im and ’is princing was jest a bit too thick!” 

“Gaw !” he reflected, sitting on the counter and 
eating, “what a thing life is ! ’Ere am I ; I seen 
’is picture, ’eard ’is name since I was a kid in frocks. 
Prince Karl Albert ! And if any one ’ad tole me 


320 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


I was going to blow ’im to smithereens — there ! 
I shouldn’t ’ave believed it, Kitty. 

“That chap at Margit ought to ’ave tole me 
about it. All ’e tole me was that I got a weak 
chess. 

“That other chap, ’e ain’t going to do much. 
Wonder what I ought to do about ’im?” 

He surveyed the trees with a keen blue eye and 
fingered the gun on his knee. “I don’t like this 
killing, Kitty,” he said. “It’s like Kurt said 
about being blooded. Seems to me you got to 
be blooded young. ... If that Prince ’ad come 
up to me and said, ‘ Shake ’ands !’ I’d ’ave shook 
’ands. . . . Now ’ere’s that other chap, dodging 
about ! ’E’s got ’is ’ead ’urt already, and there’s 
something wrong with his leg. And burns. 
Golly ! it isn’t three weeks ago I first set eyes on 
’im, and then ’e was smart and set up — ’ands 
full of ’air-brushes and things, and swearin’ at 
me. A regular gentleman ! Now ’e’s ’arfway 
to a wild man. What am I to do with ’im? 
What the ’ell am I to do with ’im ? I can’t leave 
’im ’ave that flying-machine; that’s a bit too 
good, and if I don’t kill ’im, ’e’ll jest ’ang about 
this island and starve. . . . 

“ ’E’s got a sword, of course.” . . . 

He resumed his philosophising after he had lit a 
cigarette. 

“War’s a silly gaim, Kitty. It’s a silly gaim ! 
We common people — we were fools. We thought 
those big people knew what they were up to — 
and they didn’t. Look at that chap ! ’E ’ad 
all Germany be’ind ’im, and what ’as ’e made of 



“ At one point ten dark-complexioned men were hanging in 

A STRING FROM THE TREES ALONG TIIE ROADSIDE ” 








• * v ' ; - 











ON GOAT ISLAND 


321 


it? Smeshin' and blunderin' and destroyin', 
and there 'e 'is ! Jest a mess of blood and boots 
and things ! Jest an 'orrid splash ! Prince Karl 
Albert ! And all the men 'e led and the ships 
'e 'ad, the airships, and the dragon-fliers — all 
scattered like a paper-chase between this 'ole 
and Germany. And fightin' going on and burnin' 
and killin' that 'e started, war without end all 
over the world ! 

“I suppose I shall 'ave to kill that other chap. 
I suppose I must. But it ain't at all the sort of 
job I fancy, Kitty!" 

For a time he hunted about the island amidst 
the uproar of the waterfall, looking for the wounded 
officer, and at last he started him out of some 
bushes near the head of Biddle Stairs. But as 
he saw the bent and bandaged figure in limping 
flight before him, he found his Cockney softness 
too much for him again; he could neither shoot 
nor pursue. U 1 carn’t," he said, “ that's flat. I 
'aven't the guts for it ! 'E'll 'ave to go." 

He turned his steps towards the flying-ma- 
chine. . . . 

He never saw the bird-faced officer again, nor 
any further evidence of his presence. Towards 
evening he grew fearful of ambushes and hunted 
vigorously for an hour or so, but in vain. He 
slept in a good defensible position at the extremity 
of the rocky point that runs out to the Canadian 
Fall, and in the night he woke in panic terror 
and fired his gun. But it was nothing. He slept 
no more that night. In the morning he became 
curiously concerned for the vanished man, and 


322 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


hunted for him as one might for an erring brother. 
“If I knew some German/’ he said, “I’d ’oiler. 
It’s jest not knowing German does it. You can’t 
explain.” 

He discovered, later, traces of an attempt to 
cross the gap in the broken bridge. A rope with 
a bolt attached had been flung across and had 
caught in a fenestration of a projecting fragment 
of railing. The end of the rope trailed in the 
seething water towards the fall. 

But the bird-faced officer was already rubbing 
shoulders with certain inert matter that had once 
been Lieutenant Kurt and the Chinese aeronaut 
and a dead cow, and much other uncongenial 
company, in the huge circle of the Whirlpool two 
and a quarter miles away. Never had that great 
gathering place, that incessant, aimless, unpro- 
gressive hurry of waste and battered things, been 
so crowded with strange and melancholy derelicts. 
Round they went and round, and every day 
brought its new contributions, luckless brutes, 
shattered fragments of boat and flying-machine, 
endless citizens from the cities upon the shores 
of the great lakes above. Much came from 
Cleveland. It all gathered here, and whirled 
about indefinitely, and over it all gathered daily 
a greater abundance of birds. 


CHAPTER X 


THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR 

§ 1 

Bert spent two more days upon Goat Island, 
and finished all his provisions except the cigarettes 
and mineral water, before he brought himself to 
try the Asiatic flying-machine. 

Even at last he did not so much go off upon it as 
get carried off. It had taken only an hour or so 
to substitute wing stays from the second flying- 
machine and to replace the nuts he had himself 
removed. The engine was in working order, 
and differed only very simply and obviously from 
that of a contemporary motor-bicycle. The rest 
of the time was taken up by a vast musing 
and delaying and hesitation. Chiefly he saw 
himself splashing into the rapids and whirling 
down them to the Fall, clutching and drowning, 
but also he had a vision of being hopelessly in the 
air, going fast and unable to ground. His mind 
was too concentrated upon the business of flying 
for him to think very much of what might happen 
to an indefinite-spirited Cockney without creden- 
tial who arrived on an Asiatic flying-machine 
amidst the war-infuriated population beyond. 

He still had a lingering solicitude for the bird- 
323 


324 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


faced officer. He had a haunting fancy he might 
be lying disabled or badly smashed in some way 
in some nook or cranny of the Island; and it 
was only after a most exhaustive search that 
he abandoned that distressing idea. “If I found 
’im,” he reasoned the while, “what could I do 
wiv ’im? You can’t blow a chap’s brains out 
when ’e’s down. And I don’ see ’ow else I can 
’elp ’im.” 

Then the kitten bothered his highly developed 
sense of social responsibility. “If I leave ’er, 
she’ll starve. . . . Ought to catch mice for ’er- 
self. ... Are there mice? . . . Birds? . . . 
She’s too young. . . . She’s like me; she’s 
a bit too civilised.” 

Finally he stuck her in his side pocket and she 
became greatly interested in the memories of 
corned beef she found there. 

With her in his pocket, he seated himself in the 
saddle of the flying-machine. Big, clumsy thing 
it was — and not a bit like a bicycle. Still the 
working of it was fairly plain. You set the engine 
going — so; kicked yourself up until the wheel 
was vertical, so; engaged the gyroscope, so, and 
then — then — you just pulled up this lever. 

Rather stiff it was, but suddenly it came 
over 

The big curved wings on either side flapped dis- 
concertingly, flapped again, click, clock, click, 
clock, clitter-clock ! 

Stop ! The thing was heading for the water ; 
its wheel was in the water. Bert groaned from 
his heart and struggled to restore the lever to its 


THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR 325 


first position. Click, clock, clitter-clock, he was 
rising ! The machine was lifting its dripping 
wheel out of the eddies, and he was going up ! 
There was no stopping now, no good in stopping 
now. In another moment Bert, clutching and 
convulsive and rigid, with staring eyes and a face 
pale as death, was flapping up above the Rapids, 
jerking to every jerk of the wings, and rising, 
rising. 

There was no comparison in dignity and com- 
fort between a flying-machine and a balloon. 
Except in its moments of descent, the balloon was 
a vehicle of faultless urbanity; this was a buck- 
jumping mule, a mule that jumped up and never 
came down again. Click, clock, click, clock; 
with each beat of the strangely shaped wings it 
jumped Bert upward and caught him neatly 
again half a second later on the saddle. And 
while in ballooning there is no wind, since the 
balloon is a part of the wind, flying is a wild per- 
petual creation of and plunging into wind. It 
was a wind that above all things sought to blind 
him, to force him to close his eyes. It occurred 
to him presently to twist his knees and legs inward 
and grip with them, or surely he would have been 
bumped into two clumsy halves. And he was 
going up, a hundred yards high, two hundred, 
three hundred, over the streaming, frothing 
wilderness of water below — up, up, up. That 
was all right, but how presently would one go 
horizontally? He tried to think if these things 
did go horizontally. No ! They flapped up and 
then they soared down. For a time he would keep 


326 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


on flapping up. Tears streamed from his eyes. 
He wiped them with one temerariously disengaged 
hand. 

Was it better to risk a fall over land or over 
water — such water ? 

He was flapping up above the Upper Rapids 
towards Buffalo. It was at any rate a comfort 
that the Falls and the wild swirl of waters below 
them were behind him. He was flying up straight. 
That he could see. How did one turn ? 

He was presently almost cool, and his eyes got 
more used to the rush of air, but he was getting 
very high, very high. He tilted his head forwards 
and surveyed the country, blinking. He could 
see all over Buffalo, a place with three great 
blackened scars of ruin, and hills and stretches 
beyond. He wondered if he was half a mile high, 
or more. There were some people among some 
houses near a railway station between Niagara 
and Buffalo, and then more people. They went 
like ants busily in and out of the houses. He saw 
two motor cars gliding along the road towards 
Niagara city. Then far away in the south he 
saw a great Asiatic airship going eastward. “Oh, 
Gord!” he said, and became earnest in his in- 
effectual attempts to alter his direction. But 
that airship took no notice of him, and he con- 
tinued to ascend convulsively. The world got 
more and more extensive and maplike. Click, 
clock, clitter-clock. Above him and very near 
to him now was a hazy stratum of cloud. 

He determined to disengage the wing clutch. 
He did so. The lever resisted his strength for a 


THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR 327 

time, then over it came, and instantly the tail 
of the machine cocked up and the wings became 
rigidly spread. Instantly everything was swift 
and smooth and silent. He was gliding rapidly 
down the air against a wild gale of wind, his eyes 
three-quarters shut. 

A little lever that had hitherto been obdurate 
now confessed itself mobile. He turned it over 
gently to the right, and whiroo ! — the left wing 
had in some mysterious way given at its edge 
and he was sweeping round and downward in an 
immense right-handed spiral. For some moments 
he experienced all the helpless sensations of ca- 
tastrophe. He restored the lever to its middle 
position with some difficulty, and the wings were 
equalised again. 

He turned it to the left and had a sensation of 
being spun round backwards. “Too much!” 
he gasped. 

He discovered that he was rushing down at a 
headlong pace towards a railway line and some 
factory buildings. They appeared to be tearing 
up to him to devour him. He must have dropped 
all that height. For a moment he had the inef- 
fectual sensations of one whose bicycle bolts down- 
hill. The ground had almost taken him by sur- 
prise. “ ? Ere !” he cried; and then with a violent 
effort of all his being he got the beating engine at 
work again and set the wings flapping. He 
swooped down and up and resumed his quivering 
and pulsating ascent of the air. 

He went high again, until he had a wide view 
of the pleasant upland country of western New 


328 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


York State, and then made a long coast down, 
and so up again, and then a coast. Then as he 
came swooping a quarter of a mile above a village 
he saw people running about, running away — 
evidently in relation to his hawk-like passage. 
He got an idea that he had been shot at. 

“Up!” he said, and attacked that lever again. 
It came over with remarkable docility, and sud- 
denly the wings seemed to give way in the middle. 
But the engine was still ! It had stopped. He 
flung the lever back rather by instinct than design. 
What to do? 

Much happened in a few seconds, but also his 
mind was quick, he thought very quickly. He 
couldn’t get up again, he was gliding down the 
air; he would have to hit something. 

He was travelling at the rate of perhaps thirty 
miles an hour down, down. 

That plantation of larches looked the softest 
thing — mossy almost ! 

Could he get it ? He gave himself to the steer- 
ing. Round to the right — left ! 

Swirroo ! Crackle ! He was gliding over the 
tops of the trees, ploughing through them, tum- 
bling into a cloud of green sharp leaves and black 
twigs. There was a sudden snapping, and he fell 
off the saddle forward, a thud and a crashing of 
branches. Some twigs hit him smartly in the 
face. . . . 

He was between a tree-stem and the saddle, with 
his leg over the steering lever and, so far as he 
could realise, not hurt. He tried to alter his 
position and free his leg, and found himself slip- 


THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR 329 


ping and dropping through branches with every- 
thing giving way beneath him. He clutched, and 
found himself in the lower branches of a tree 
beneath the flying-machine. The air was full of 
a pleasant resinous smell. He stared for a 
moment motionless, and then very carefully 
clambered down branch by branch to the soft 
needle- covered ground below. 

“Good business,” he said, looking up at the 
bent and tilted kite-wings above. 

“I dropped soft !” 

He rubbed his chin with his hand and medi- 
tated. “Blowed if I don’t think I’m a rather 
lucky fellow!” he said, surveying the pleasant, 
sun-bespattered ground under the trees. Then 
he became aware of a violent tumult at his side. 
“Lord!” he said, “you must be ’arf smothered,” 
and extracted the kitten from his pocket-hand- 
kerchief and pocket. She was twisted and 
crumpled and extremely glad to see the light 
again. Her little tongue peeped between her 
teeth. He put her down, and she ran a dozen 
paces and shook herself and stretched and sat up 
and began to wash. 

“Nex’?” he said, looking about him, and then 
with a gesture of vexation, “Desh it! I ought 
to ’ave brought that gun !” 

He had rested it against a tree when he had 
seated himself in the flying-machine saddle. 

He was puzzled for a time by the immense 
peacefulness in the quality of the world, and then 
he perceived that the roar of the cataract was no 
longer in his ears. 


330 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


§ 2 

He had no very clear idea of what sort of people 
he might come upon in this country. It was, he 
knew, America. Americans he had always under- 
stood were the citizens of a great and powerful 
nation, dry and humorous in their manner, ad- 
dicted to the use of the bowie-knife and revolver, 
and in the habit of talking through the nose like 
Norfolkshire, and saying “ allow” and “ reckon” 
and “ calculate,” after the manner of the people 
who live on the New Forest side of Hampshire. 
Also they were very rich, had rocking-chairs, and 
put their feet at unusual altitudes, and they 
chewed tobacco, gum, and other substances, with 
untiring industry. Commingled with them were 
cowboys, Red Indians, and comic, respectful 
niggers. This he had learnt from the fiction in his 
public library. Beyond that he had learnt very 
little. He was not surprised therefore when he 
met armed men. 

He decided to abandon the shattered flying- 
machine. He wandered through the trees for 
some time, and then struck a road that seemed 
to his urban English eyes to be remarkably wide 
but not properly “made.” Neither hedge nor 
ditch nor curbed distinctive footpath separated 
it from the woods, and it went in that long easy 
curve which distinguishes the tracks of an open 
continent. Ahead he saw a man carrying a gun 
under his arm, a man in a soft black hat, a blue 
blouse, and black trousers, and with a broad round 
fat face quite innocent of goatee. This person 


THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR 331 


regarded him askance and heard him speak with 
a start. 

“Can you tell me whereabouts I am at all?” 
asked Bert. 

The man regarded him, and more particularly 
his rubber boots, with sinister suspicion. Then 
he replied in a strange outlandish tongue that was, 
ii as a matter of fact, .Czech. He ended suddenly 
at the sight of Bert’s blank face with “Don’t spik 
English.” 

“Oh!” said Bert. He reflected gravely for a 
moment, and then went his way. 

“Thenks,” he said as an afterthought. The 
man regarded his back for a moment, was struck 
with an idea, began an abortive gesture, sighed, 
gave it up, and went on also with a depressed 
countenance. 

Presently Bert came to a big wooden house 
standing casually among the trees. It looked a 
bleak, bare box of a house to him, no creeper 
grew on it, no hedge nor wall nor fence parted it 
off from the woods about it. He stopped before 
the steps that led up to the door, perhaps thirty 
yards away. The place seemed deserted. He 
would have gone up to the door and rapped, but 
suddenly a big black dog appeared at the side 
and regarded him. It was a huge heavy-jawed 
dog of some unfamiliar breed, and it wore a spike- 
studded collar. It did not bark nor approach 
him, it just bristled quietly and emitted a single 
sound like a short, deep cough. 

Bert hesitated and went on. 

He stopped thirty paces away and stood peer- 


332 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


ing about him among the trees. “If I ’aven’t 
been and lef that kitten,” he said. 

Acute sorrow wrenched him for a time. The 
black dog came through the trees to get a better 
look at him and coughed that well-bred cough 
again. Bert resumed the road. 

“She’ll do all right/’ he said. . . . “She’ll 
catch things. 

“She’ll do all right/’ he said presently, without 
conviction. But if it had not been for the black 
dog, he would have gone back. 

When he was out of sight of the house and the 
black dog, he went into the woods on the other 
side of the way and emerged after an interval 
trimming a very tolerable cudgel with his pocket- 
knife. Presently he saw an attractive-looking 
rock by the track and picked it up and put it in 
his pocket. Then he came to three or four houses, 
wooden like the last, each with an ill-painted 
white verandah (that was his name for it) and all 
standing in the same casual way upon the ground. 
Behind, through the woods, he saw pig-stys and 
a rooting black sow leading a brisk, adventurous 
family. A wild-looking woman with sloe-black 
eyes and dishevelled black hair sat upon the steps 
of one of the houses nursing a baby, but at the 
sight of Bert she got up and went inside, and he 
heard her bolting the door. Then a boy appeared 
among the pig-stys, but he would not understand 
Bert’s hail. 

“I suppose it is America!” said Bert. 

The houses became more frequent down the 
road, and he passed two other extremely wild and 


THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR 333 


dirty-looking men without addressing them. One 
carried a gun and the other a hatchet, and they 
scrutinised him and his cudgel scornfully. Then 
he struck a cross-road with a mono-rail at its side, 
and there was a notice board at the corner with 
“Wait here for the cars.” “That's all right, 
any'ow,” said Bert. “Wonder 'ow long I should 
; ave to wait?” It occurred to him that in the 
present disturbed state of the country the service 
might be interrupted, and as there seemed more 
houses to the right than the left he turned to the 
right. He passed an old negro. “ ; Ullo!” said 
Bert. “Goo' morning !” 

“Good day, sah !” said the old negro, in a voice 
of almost incredible richness. 

“What's the name of this place?” asked 
Bert. 

“Tanooda, sah!” said the negro. 

“Thenks!” said Bert. 

“Thank you , sah!” said the negro, overwhelm- 
ingly. 

Bert came to houses of the same detached, 
unwalled, wooden type, but adorned now with 
enamelled advertisements partly in English and 
partly in Esperanto. Then he came to what he 
concluded was a grocer's shop. It was the first 
house that professed the hospitality of an open 
door, and from within came a strangely familiar 
sound. “Gaw !” he said, searching in his pockets. 
“Why! I 'aven't wanted money for free weeks! 

I wonder if I Grubb 'ad most of it. Ah!” 

He produced a handful of coins and regarded it; 
three pennies, sixpence, and a shilling. “That's 


334 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


all right / 7 he said, forgetting a very obvious 
consideration. 

He approached the door, and as he did so a 
compactly built, grey-faced man in shirt sleeves 
appeared in it and scrutinised him and his cudgel. 
“Mornin 7 , 77 said Bert. “Can I get anything to eat 
7 r drink in this shop?” 

The man in the door replied, thank Heaven, in 
clear, good American. “This, sir, is not A shop, 
it is A store . 77 

“Oh ! 77 said Bert, and then, “Well, can I get 
anything to eat? 77 

“You can , 77 said the American in a tone 
of confident encouragement, and led the way 
inside. 

The shop seemed to him by his Bun Hill stand- 
ards extremely roomy, well lit, and unencumbered. 
There was a long counter to the left of him, with 
drawers and miscellaneous commodities ranged 
behind it, a number of chairs, several tables, and 
two spittoons to the right, various barrels, cheeses, 
and bacon up the vista, and beyond, a large arch- 
way leading to more space. A little group of men 
was assembled round one of the tables, and a 
woman of perhaps five-and-thirty leant with her 
elbows on the counter. All the men were armed 
with rifles, and the barrel of a gun peeped above 
the counter. They were all listening idly, in- 
attentively, to a cheap, metallic-toned gramophone 
that occupied a table near at hand. From its 
brazen throat came words that gave Bert a 
qualm of homesickness, that brought back in his 
memory a sunlit beach, a group of children, red- 


THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR 335 


painted bicycles, Grubb, and an approaching 
balloon . 1 — 

“ Ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-ting-a.ling-a-tang . . . 

What Price Hair-pins Now ? ” 

A heavy-necked man in a straw hat, who was 
chewing something, stopped the machine with a 
touch, and they all turned their eyes on Bert. 
And all their eyes were tired eyes. 

“Can we give this gentleman anything to eat, 
mother, or can we not?” said the proprietor. 

“He kin have what he likes,” said the woman at 
the counter, without moving, “right up from a 
cracker to a square meal.” She struggled with 
a yawn, after the manner of one who has been up 
all night. 

“I want a meal,” said Bert, “but I ’aven’t very 
much money. I don’ want to give mor’n a shil- 
lin’.” 

“Mor’n a what?” said the proprietor, sharply. 

“Mor’n a shillin’,” said Bert, with a sudden dis- 
agreeable realisation coming into his mind. 

“Yes,” said the proprietor, startled for a mo- 
ment from his courtly bearing. “But what in hell 
is a shilling?” 

“He means a quarter,” said a wise-looking, lank 
young man in riding gaiters. 

Bert, trying to conceal his consternation, pro- 
duced a coin. “That’s a shilling,” he said. 

“He calls A store A shop,” said the proprietor, 
“and he wants A meal for A shilling. May I ask 
you, sir, what part of America you hail from?” 


336 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


Bert replaced the shilling in his pocket as he 
spoke, “ Niagara,” he said. 

“And when did you leave Niagara?” 

“’Bout an hour ago.” 

“Well,” said the proprietor, and turned with a 
puzzled smile to the others. “Well!” 

They asked various questions simultaneously. 

Bert selected one or two for reply. “You see,” 
he said, “I been with the German air-fleet. I got 
caught up by them, sort of by accident, and 
brought over here.” 

“From England?” 

“Yes — from England. Way of Germany. I 
was in a great battle with them Asiatics, and I got 
lef’ on a little island between the Falls.” 

“Goat Island?” 

“I don’ know what it was called. But any’ow 
I found a flying-machine and made a sort of fly 
with it and got here.” 

Two men stood up with incredulous eyes on 
him. “Where’s the flying-machine ? ” they asked ; 
“outside?” 

“It’s back in the woods here — ’bout arf a mile 
away.” 

“Is it good?” said a thick-lipped man with a 
scar. 

“I come down rather a smash .” 

Everybody got up and stood about him and 
talked confusingly. They wanted him to take 
them to the flying-machine at once. 

“Look ’ere,” said Bert, “I’ll show you — only 
I ’aven’t ’ad anything to eat since yestiday — 
except mineral water,” 


► 



FIELD THAT HAD IJEEN PLOUGHED AND NOT SOWN 





















THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR 337 


A gaunt soldierly-looking young man with long 
lean legs in riding gaiters and a bandolier, who 
had hitherto not spoken, intervened now on his 
behalf in a note of confident authority. “That’s 
aw right,” he said. “Give him a feed, Mr. Logan 
— from me. I want to hear more of that story of 
his. We’ll see his machine afterwards. If you 
ask me, I should say it’s a remarkably interesting 
accident had dropped this gentleman here. I 
guess we requisition that flying-machine — if 
we find it — for local defence.” 

§ 3 

So Bert fell on his feet again, and sat eating cold 
meat and good bread and mustard and drinking 
very good beer, and telling in the roughest outline 
and with the omissions and inaccuracies of state- 
ment natural to his type of mind, the simple story 
of his adventures. He told how he and a “gentle- 
man friend” had been visiting the seaside for 
their health, how a “ chep ” came along in a balloon 
and fell out as he fell in, how he had drifted to 
Franconia, how the Germans had seemed to mis- 
take him for some one and had “took him pris- 
oner” and brought him to New York, how he 
had been to Labrador and back, how he had got 
to Goat Island and found himself there alone. 
He omitted the matter of the Prince and the But- 
teridge aspect of the affair, not out of any deep 
deceitfulness, but because he felt the inadequacy 
of his narrative powers. He wanted everything 
to seem easy and natural and correct, to present 


338 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


himself as a trustworthy and understandable 
Englishman in a sound mediocre position, to whom 
refreshment and accommodation might be given 
with freedom and confidence. 

When his fragmentary story came to New York 
and the battle of Niagara, they suddenly produced 
newspapers which had been lying about on the 
table, and began to check him and question him by 
these vehement accounts. It became evident 
to him that his descent had revived and roused to 
flames again a discussion, a topic, that had been 
burning continuously, that had smouldered only 
through sheer exhaustion of material during the 
temporary diversion of the gramophone, a dis- 
cussion that had drawn these men together, rifle 
in hand, the one supreme topic of the whole world, 
the War and the methods of the War. He found 
any question of his personality and his personal 
adventures falling into the background, found 
himself taken for granted, and no more than a 
source of information. The ordinary affairs of 
life, the buying and selling of everyday necessities, 
the cultivation of the ground, the tending of beasts, 
was going on as it were by force of routine, as the 
common duties of life go on in a house whose 
master lies under the knife of some supreme opera- 
tion. The overruling interest was furnished by 
those great Asiatic airships that went upon incal- 
culable missions across the sky, the crimson-clad 
swordsmen who might come fluttering down de- 
manding petrol, or food, or news. These men were 
asking, all the continent was asking, “What are 
we to do? What can we try? How can we 


THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR 339 


get at them ? ” Bert fell into his place as an 
item, ceased even in his own thoughts to be a 
central and independent thing. 

After he had eaten and drunken his fill and 
sighed and stretched and told them how good the 
food seemed to him, he lit a cigarette they gave 
him and led the way, with some doubts and 
trouble, to the flying-machine amidst the larches. 
It became manifest that the gaunt young man, 
whose name, it seemed, was Laurier, was a leader 
both by position and natural aptitude. He knew 
the names and characters and capabilities of all 
the men who were with him, and he set them to 
work at once with vigour and effect to secure 
this precious instrument of war. They got the 
thing down to the ground deliberately and care- 
fully, felling a couple of trees in the process, and 
they built a wide flat roof of timbers and tree 
boughs to guard their precious find against its 
chance discovery by any passing Asiatics. Long 
before evening they had an engineer from the next 
township at work upon it, and they were casting 
lots among the seventeen picked men who wanted 
to take it for its first flight. And Bert found his 
kitten and carried it back to Logan’s store and 
handed it with earnest admonition to Mrs. Logan. 
And it was reassuringly clear to him that in Mrs. 
Logan both he and the kitten had found a con- 
genial soul. 

Laurier was not only a masterful person and a 
wealthy property owner and employer — he was 
president, Bert learnt with awe, of the Tanooda 
Canning Corporation — but he was popular and 


340 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


skilful in the arts of popularity. In the evening 
quite a crowd of men gathered in the store and 
talked of the flying-machine and of the war that 
was tearing the world to pieces. And presently 
came a man on a bicycle with an ill-printed news- 
paper of a single sheet which acted like fuel in a 
blazing furnace of talk. It was nearly all Amer- 
ican news; the old-fashioned cables had fallen 
into disuse for some years, and the Marconi sta- 
tions across the ocean and along the Atlantic 
coastline seemed to have furnished particularly 
tempting points of attack. 

But such news it was. 

Bert sat in the background — for by this time 
they had gauged his personal quality pretty com- 
pletely — listening. Before his staggering mind 
passed strange vast images as they talked, of 
great issues at a crisis, of nations in tumultuous 
march, of continents overthrown, of famine and 
destruction beyond measure. Ever and again, 
in spite of his efforts to suppress them, certain 
personal impressions would scamper across the 
weltering confusion, the horrible mess of the 
exploded Prince, the Chinese aeronaut upside 
down, the limping and bandaged bird-faced 
officer blundering along in miserable and hope- 
less flight. . . . 

They spoke of fire and massacre, of cruelties 
and counter cruelties, of things that had been 
done to harmless Asiatics by race-mad men, of 
the wholesale burning and smashing up of towns, 
railway junctions, bridges, of whole populations 
in hiding and exodus. “ Every ship they’ve got 


THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR 341 


is in the Pacific/’ he heard one man exclaim. 
“ Since the fighting began they can’t have landed 
on the Pacific slope less than a million men. 
They’ve come to stay in these States, and they 
will — living or dead.” 

Slowly, broadly, invincibly, there grew upon 
Bert’s mind realisation of the immense tragedy 
of humanity into which his life was flowing; 
the appalling and universal nature of the epoch 
that had arrived; the conception of an end to 
security and order and habit. The whole world 
was at war and it could not get back to peace, it 
might never recover peace. 

He had thought the things he had seen had been 
exceptional, conclusive things, that the besieging 
of New York and the battle of the Atlantic were 
epoch-making events between long years of se- 
curity. And they had been but the first warning 
impacts of universal cataclysm. Each day de- 
struction and hate and disaster grew, the fissures 
widened between man and man, new regions of 
the fabric of civilisation crumbled and gave way. 
Below, the armies grew and the people perished; 
above, the airships and aeroplanes fought and 
fled, raining destruction. 

It is difficult perhaps for the broad-minded and 
long-perspectived reader to understand how in- 
credible the breaking down of the scientific civi- 
lisation seemed to those who actually lived at this 
time, who in their own persons went down in that 
debacle. Progress had marched as it seemed 
invincible about the earth, never now to rest 
again. For three hundred years and more the 


342 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


long, steadily accelerated diastole of Europeanised 
civilisation had been in progress : towns had been 
multiplying, populations increasing, values rising, 
new countries developing; thought, literature, 
knowledge unfolding and spreading. It seemed 
but a part of the process that every year the 
instruments of war were vaster and more powerful, 
and that armies and explosives outgrew all other 
growing things. . . . 

Three hundred years of diastole, and then came 
the swift and unexpected systole, like the closing 
of a fist. They could not understand it was a 
systole. 

They could not think of it as anything but a 
jolt, a hitch, a mere oscillatory indication of the 
swiftness of their progress. Collapse, though it 
happened all about them, remained incredible. 
Presently some falling mass smote them down, 
or the ground opened beneath their feet. They 
died incredulous. . . . 

These men in the store made a minute, remote 
group under this immense canopy of disaster. 
They turned from one little aspect to another. 
What chiefly concerned them was defence against 
Asiatic raiders swooping for petrol or to destroy 
weapons or communications. Everywhere levies 
were being formed at that time to defend the plant 
of the railroads day and night in the hope that 
communication would speedily be restored. The 
land war was still far away. A man with a flat 
voice distinguished himself by a display of knowl- 
edge and cunning. He told them all with con- 
fidence just what had been wrong with the Ger- 





















■ 








































































































































THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR 343 


man drachenflieger and the American aeroplanes, 
just what advantage the Japanese flyers possessed. 
He launched out into a romantic description of 
the Butteridge machine and riveted Bert’s at- 
tention. “I see that,” said Bert, and was smitten 
silent by a thought. The man with the flat voice 
talked on, without heeding him, of the strange 
irony of Butteridge’s death. At that Bert had a 
little twinge of relief — he would never meet 
Butteridge again. It appeared Butteridge had 
died suddenly, very suddenly. 

“ And his secret, sir, perished with him ! When 
they came to look for the parts — none could 
find them. He had hidden them all too well.” 

“But couldn’t he tell?” asked the man in the 
straw hat. “Did he die so suddenly as that?” 

“Struck down, sir. Rage and apoplexy. At a 
place called Dymchurch in England.” 

“That’s right,” said Laurier. “I remember a 
page about it in the Sunday American. At the 
time they said it was a German spy had stolen his 
balloon.” 

“Well, sir,” said the flat-voiced man, “that fit 
of apoplexy at Dymchurch was the worst thing 
— ab-so-lutely the worst thing that ever happened 
to the world. For if it had not been for the death 
of Mr. Butteridge .” 

“No one knows his secret?” 

“Not a soul. It’s gone. His balloon, it ap- 
pears, was lost at sea, with all the plans. Down 
it went, and they went with it.” 

Pause. 

“With machines such as he made we could fight 


344 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


these Asiatic fliers on more than equal terms. We 
could outfly and beat down those scarlet hum- 
ming-birds wherever they appeared. But it’s 
gone, it’s gone, and there’s no time to reinvent it 
now. We got to fight with what we got — and 
the odds are against us. That won’t stop us 
fightin’. No! but just think of it!” 

Bert was trembling violently. He cleared his 
throat hoarsely. 

“I say,” he said, “look here, I .” 

Nobody regarded him. The man with the flat 
voice was opening a new branch of the subject. 
“I allow — ” he began. 

Bert became violently excited. He stood up. 
He made clawing motions with his hands. “I 
say!” he exclaimed, “Mr. Laurier. Look ’ere 
— I want — about that Butteridge ma- 
chine .” 

Mr. Laurier, sitting on an adjacent table, with 
a magnificent gesture, arrested the discourse of 
the flat-voiced man. “What’s he saying?” said 
he. 

Then the whole company realised that some- 
thing was happening to Bert; either he was suf- 
focating or going mad. He was spluttering. 
“Look ’ere! I say! ’Old on a bit!” and trem- 
bling and eagerly unbuttoning himself. 

He tore open his collar and opened vest and 
shirt. He plunged into his interior and for an 
instant it seemed he was plucking forth his liver. 
Then as he struggled with buttons on his shoulder 
they perceived this flattened horror was in fact 
a terribly dirty flannel chest-protector. In an- 


THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR 345 


other moment Bert, in a state of irregular d6- 
colletage, was standing over the table displaying 
a sheaf of papers. 

“These!” he gasped. “These are the plans! 
... You know ! Mr. Butteridge — his ma- 
chine ! What died ! I was the chap that went 
off in that balloon!” 

For some seconds every one was silent. They 
stared from these papers to Bert’s white face and 
blazing eyes, and back to the papers on the table. 
Nobody moved. Then the man with the flat 
voice spoke. 

“Irony!” he said, with a note of satisfaction. 
“Real rightdown Irony! When it’s too late to 
think of making 'em any more!" 

§ 4 

They would all no doubt have been eager to 
hear Bert’s story over again, but it was at this 
point that Laurier showed his quality. “No, sir" 
he said, and slid from off his table. 

He impounded the dispersing Butteridge plans 
with one comprehensive sweep of his arm, res- 
cuing them even : ' 1 the expository finger- 

marks of the man w lli the ti i voice, and handed 
them to Bert. “Pir ok,” he said, “where 

you had ’em. We j urney before us.” 

Bert took them. 

“Whar?” said t , m in the straw hat. 

“Why, sir, we ai goi: find the President of 

these States and g plans over to him. I 

decline to believe, sir, we re too late.” 


346 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


“ Where is the President ?” asked Bert weakly 
in the pause that followed. 

“Logan,” said Laurier, disregarding that feeble 
inquiry, “you must help us in this.” 

It seemed only a matter of a few minutes before 
Bert and Laurier and the storekeeper were ex- 
amining a number of bicycles that were stowed 
in the hinder room of the store. Bert didn’t 
like any of them very much. They had wood 
rims, and an experience of wood rims in the Eng- 
lish climate had taught him to hate them. That, 
however, and one or two other objections to an 
immediate start were overruled by Laurier. 
“But where is the President?” Bert repeated 
as they stood behind Logan while he pumped up 
a deflated tyre. 

Laurier looked down on him. “He is reported 
in the neighbourhood of Albany — out towards 
the Berkshire Hills. He is moving from place to 
place and, as far as he can, organising the defence 
by telegraph and telephone. The Asiatic air- 
fleet is trying to locate him. When they think 
they have located the seat of government, they 
throw bombs. This inconveniences him, but so 
far they have not come within ten miles of him. 
The Asiatic air-fleet is at present scattered all 
over the Eastern States, seeking out and destroy- 
ing gas-works and whatever seems conducive 
to the building of airships or the transport of 
troops. Our retaliatory measures are slight in 

the extreme. But with these machines Sir, 

this ride of ours will count among the historical 
rides of the world!” 


THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR 347 

He came near to striking an attitude. 

“We shan’t get to him to-night?” asked Bert. 

_ “No,- sir!” said Laurier. "We shall have to 
ride some days, sure!” 

“I suppose we can’t get a lift on a train — or 
anything?” 

“No, sir! There’s been no transit by Tanooda 
for three days. It is no good waiting. We shall 
have to get on as well as we can.” 

“Startin’ now?” 

“Starting now!” 

“But ’ow about We shan’t be able to do 

much to-night.” 

“May as well ride till we’re fagged and sleep 
then. So much clear gain. Our road is east- 
ward.” 

“Of course ” began Bert, with memories of 

the dawn upon Goat Island, and left his sentence 
unfinished. 

He gave his attention to the more scientific 
packing of the chest-protector, for several of the 
plans flapped beyond his vest. 

§ 5 

For a week Bert led a life of mixed sensations. 
Amidst these fatigue in the legs predominated. 
Mostly he rode, rode with Laurier’s back inexorably 
ahead, through a land like a larger England, with 
bigger hills and wider valleys, larger fields, wider 
roads, fewer hedges, and wooden houses with com- 
modious piazzas. He rode. Laurier made in- 
quiries, Laurier chose the turnings, Laurier 


348 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


doubted, Laurier decided. Now it seemed they 
were in telephonic touch with the President ; 
now something had happened and he was lost 
again. But always they had to go on, and always 
Bert rode. A tyre was deflated. Still he rode. 
He grew saddle sore. Laurier declared that un- 
important. Asiatic flying ships passed over- 
head, the two cyclists made a dash for cover until 
the sky was clear. Once a red Asiatic flying-ma- 
chine came fluttering after them, so low they could 
distinguish the aeronaut’s head. He followed 
them for a mile. Now they came to regions of 
panic, now to regions of destruction; here people 
were fighting for food, here they seemed hardly 
stirred from the countryside routine. They spent 
a day in a deserted and damaged Albany. The 
Asiatics had descended and cut every wire and 
made a cinder-heap of the Junction, and our 
travellers pushed on eastward. They passed a 
hundred half-heeded incidents, and always Bert 
was toiling after Laurier’s indefatigable back. . . . 

Things struck upon Bert’s attention and per- 
plexed him, and then he passed on with un- 
answered questionings fading from his mind. 

He saw a large house on fire on a hillside to the 
right, and no man heeding it. . . . 

They came to a narrow railroad bridge and pres- 
ently to a mono-rail train standing in the track on 
its safety feet. It was a remarkably sumptuous 
train, the Last Word Trans-Continental Express, 
and the passengers were all playing cards or sleep- 
ing or preparing a picnic meal on a grassy slope 
near at hand. They had been there six days. . . . 


THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR 349 


At one point ten dark-complexioned men were 
hanging in a string from the trees along the road- 
side. Bert wondered why. . . . 

At one peaceful-looking village where they 
stopped off to get Bert’s tyre mended and found 
beer and biscuits, they were approached by an 
extremely dirty little boy without boots, who 
spoke as follows : — 

“Deyse been hanging a Chink in dose woods!” 

“Hanging a Chinaman?” said Laurier. 

“Sure. Der sleuths got him rubberin’ der rail- 
road sheds !” 

“Oh!” 

“Dose guys done wase cartridges. Deyse hung 
him and dey pulled his legs. Deyse doin’ all der 
Chinks dey can fine dat weh ! Dey ain’t takin’ 
no risks. All der Chinks dey can fine.” 

Neither Bert nor Laurier made any reply, and 
presently, after a little skilful expectoration, the 
young gentleman was attracted by the appearance 
of two of his friends down the road and shuffled 
off, whooping weirdly. . . . 

That afternoon they almost ran over a man shot 
through the body and partly decomposed, lying 
near the middle of the road, just outside Albany. 
He must have been lying there for some days. . . . 

Beyond Albany they came upon a motor car 
with a tyre burst and a young woman sitting 
absolutely passive beside the driver’s seat. An 
old man was under the car trying to effect some 
impossible repairs. Beyond, sitting with a rifle 
across his knees, with his back to the car, and 
staring into the woods, was a young man. The 


350 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


old man crawled out at their approach and still 
on all-fours accosted Bert and Laurier. The car 
had broken down overnight. The old man said 
he could not understand what was wrong, but 
he was trying to puzzle it out. Neither he nor 
his son-in-law had any mechanical aptitude. 
They had been assured this was a fool-proof 
car. It was dangerous to have to stop in 
this place. His party had been attacked by 
tramps and had had to fight. It was known 
they had provisions. He mentioned a great name 
in the world of finance. Would Laurier and Bert 
stop and help him? He proposed it first hope- 
fully, then urgently, at last in tears and terror. 

“No !” said Laurier inexorably. “We must go 
on ! We have something more than a woman to 
save. We have to save America !” 

The girl never stirred. . . . 

And once they passed a madman singing. . . . 

And at last they found the President hiding in a 
small saloon upon the outskirts of a place called 
Pinkerville on the Hudson, and gave the plans of 
the Butteridge machine into his hands. 



“‘It’s as still as the grave’” 









CHAPTER XI 


THE GREAT COLLAPSE 

§ 1 

And now the whole fabric of civilisation was 
bending and giving, and dropping to pieces and 
melting in the furnace of the war. 

The stages of the swift and universal collapse of 
the financial and scientific civilisation with which 
the twentieth century opened followed each other 
very swiftly, so swiftly that upon the foreshortened 
page of history they seem altogether to overlap. 
To begin with, one sees the world nearly at a 
maximum of wealth and prosperity. To its in- 
habitants indeed it seemed also at a maximum of 
security. When now in retrospect the thoughtful 
observer surveys the intellectual history of this 
time, when one reads its surviving fragments of 
literature, its scraps of political oratory, the few 
small voices that chance has selected out of a 
thousand million utterances to speak to later days, 
the most striking thing of all this web of wisdom 
and error is surely that hallucination of security. 
To men living in our present world state, orderly, 
scientific, and secured, nothing seems so pre- 
carious, so giddily dangerous, as the fabric of 
the social order with which the men of the opening 
351 


352 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


of the twentieth century were content. To us 
it seems that every institution and relationship 
was the fruit of haphazard and tradition and the 
manifest sport of chance, their laws each made 
for some separate occasion and having no relation 
to any future needs, their customs illogical, their 
education aimless and wasteful. Their method 
of economic exploitation indeed impresses a 
trained and informed mind as the most frantic 
and destructive scramble it is possible to con- 
ceive; their credit and monetary system resting 
on an unsubstantial tradition of the worthiness 
of gold, seems a thing almost fantastically un- 
stable. And they lived in planless cities, for the 
most part dangerously congested; their rails and 
roads and population were distributed over the 
earth in the wanton confusion ten thousand 
irrevelant considerations had made. Yet they 
thought confidently that this was a secure and 
permanent progressive system, and on the strength 
of some three hundred years of change and irreg- 
ular improvement answered the doubter with, 
“ Things always have gone well. We’ll worry 
through !” 

But when we contrast the state of man in the 
opening of the twentieth century with the con- 
dition of any previous period in his history, then 
perhaps we may begin to understand something 
of that blind confidence. It was not so much 
a reasoned confidence as the inevitable conse- 
quence of sustained good fortune. By such 
standards as they possessed, things had gone 
amazingly well for them. It is scarcely an ex- 


THE GREAT COLLAPSE 


353 


agger ation to say that for the first time in history 
whole populations found themselves regularly 
supplied with more than enough to eat, and the 
vital statistics of the time witness to an ameliora- 
tion of hygienic conditions rapid beyond all 
precedent, and to a vast development of intelli- 
gence and ability in all the arts that make life 
wholesome. The level and quality of the average 
education had risen tremendously; and at the 
dawn of the twentieth century comparatively 
few people in Western Europe or America were 
unable to read or write. Never before had there 
been such reading masses. There was wide 
social security. A common man might travel 
safely over three-quarters of the habitable globe, 
could go round the earth at a cost of less than the 
annual earnings of a skilled artisan. Compared 
with the liberality and comfort of the ordinary 
life of the time, the order of the Roman Empire 
under the Antonines was local and limited. And 
every year, every month, came some new in- 
crement to human achievement, a new country 
opened up, new mines, new scientific discoveries, 
a new machine ! 

For those three hundred years, indeed, the 
movement of the world seemed wholly beneficial 
to mankind. Men said, indeed, that moral or- 
ganisation was not keeping pace with physical 
progress, but few attached any meaning to these 
phrases, the understanding of which lies at the 
basis of our present safety. Sustaining and 
constructive forces did indeed for a time more than 
balance the malign drift of chance and the natural 
2a 


354 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


ignorance, prejudice, blind passion, and wasteful 
self-seeking of mankind. 

The accidental balance on the side of Progress 
was far slighter and infinitely more complex and 
delicate in its adjustments than the people of 
that time suspected; but that did not alter the 
fact that it was an effective balance. They did 
not realise that this age of relative good fortune 
was an age of immense but temporary opportunity 
for their kind. They complacently assumed 
a necessary progress towards which they had no 
moral responsibility. They did not realise that 
this security of progress was a thing still to be 
won — or lost, and that the time to win it was 
a time that passed. They went about their 
affairs energetically enough, and yet with a curious 
idleness towards those threatening things. No 
one troubled over the real dangers of mankind. 
They saw their armies and navies grow larger 
and more portentous; some of their ironclads 
at the last cost as much as the whole annual 
expenditure upon advanced education ; they 
accumulated explosives and the machinery of 
destruction; they allowed their national tradi- 
tions and jealousies to accumulate; they con- 
templated a steady enhancement of race hostility 
as the races drew closer without concern or under- 
standing, and they permitted the growth in their 
midst of an evil-spirited press, mercenary and 
unscrupulous, incapable of good and powerful 
for evil. Their State had practically no control 
over the press at all. Quite heedlessly they 
allowed this touch-paper to lie at the door of their 


THE GREAT COLLAPSE 


355 


war magazine for any spark to fire. The prece- 
dents of history were all one tale of the collapse 
of civilisations, the dangers of the time were 
manifest. One is incredulous now to believe they 
could not see. 

Could mankind have prevented this disaster of 
the War in the Air? An idle question that, as 
idle as to ask could mankind have prevented the 
decay that turned Assyria and Babylon to empty 
deserts or the slow decline and fall, the gradual 
social disorganisation, phase by phase, that 
closed the chapter of the Empire of the West ! 
They could not, because they did not, they had 
not the will to arrest it. What mankind could 
achieve with a different will is a speculation as 
idle as it is magnificent. And this was no slow 
decadence that came to the Europeanised world; 
those other civilisations rotted and crumbled 
down, the Europeanised civilisation was, as it 
were, blown up. Within the space of five years 
it was altogether disintegrated and destroyed. 
Up to the very eve of the War in the Air one sees 
a spacious spectacle of incessant advance, a world- 
wide security, enormous areas with highly or- 
ganised industry and settled populations, gigantic 
cities spreading gigantically, the seas and oceans 
dotted with shipping, the land netted with rails 
and open ways. Then suddenly the German 
air-fleets sweep across the scene, and we are in the 
beginning of the end. 


356 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


§ 2 

This story has already told of the swift rush 
upon New York of the first German air-fleet and 
of the wild, inevitable orgy of inconclusive de- 
struction that ensued. Behind it a second air- 
fleet was already swelling at its gasometers when 
England and France and Spain and Italy showed 
their hands. None of these countries had pre- 
pared for aeronautic warfare on the magnificent 
scale of the Germans, but each guarded secrets, 
each in a measure was making ready, and a com- 
mon dread of German vigour and that aggressive 
spirit Prince Karl Albert embodied, had long 
been drawing these powers together in secret 
anticipation of some such attack. This rendered 
their prompt co-operation possible, and they 
certainly co-operated promptly. The second 
aerial power in Europe at this time was France; 
the British, nervous for their Asiatic empire, 
and sensible of the immense moral effect of the 
airship upon half-educated populations, had 
placed their aeronautic parks in North India, 
and were able to play but a subordinate part in 
the European conflict. Still, even in England 
they had nine or ten big navigables, twenty or 
thirty smaller ones, and a variety of experimental 
aeroplanes. Before the fleet of Prince Karl 
Albert had crossed England, while Bert was still 
surveying Manchester in bird’s-eye view, the 
diplomatic exchanges were going on that led to 
an attack upon Germany. A heterogeneous 
collection of navigable balloons of all sizes and 


THE GREAT COLLAPSE 


357 


types gathered over the Bernese Oberland, 
crushed and burnt the twenty-five Swiss air- 
ships that unexpectedly resisted this concentra- 
tion in the battle of the Alps, and then, leaving 
the Alpine glaciers and valleys strewn with strange 
wreckage, divided into two fleets and set itself 
to terrorise Berlin and destroy the Franconian 
Park, seeking to do this before the second air- 
fleet could be inflated. 

Both over Berlin and Franconia the assailants 
with their modern explosives effected great dam- 
age before they were driven off. In Franconia 
twelve fully distended and five partially filled 
and manned giants were able to make head against 
and at last, with the help of a squadron of dra- 
chenflieger from Hamburg, defeat and pursue 
the attack and to relieve Berlin, and the Germans 
were straining every nerve to get an overwhelm- 
ing fleet in the air, and were already raiding Lon- 
don and Paris when the advance fleets from the 
Asiatic air-parks, the first intimation of a new 
factor in the conflict, were reported from Burmah 
and Armenia. 

Already the whole financial fabric of the world 
was staggering when that occurred. With the 
destruction of the American fleet in the North 
Atlantic, and the smashing conflict that ended 
the naval existence of Germany in the North Sea, 
with the burning and wrecking of billions of pounds’ 
worth of property in the four cardinal cities of 
the world, the fact of the hopeless costliness of war 
came home for the first time, came, like a blow 
in the face, to the consciousness of mankind. 


358 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


Credit went down in a wild whirl of selling. 
Everywhere appeared a phenomenon that had 
already in a mild degree manifested itself in 
preceding periods of panic; a desire to secure 
and hoard gold before prices reached bottom. 
But now it spread like wild-fire, it became uni- 
versal. Above was visible conflict and destruc- 
tion; below something was happening far more 
deadly and incurable to the flimsy fabric of finance 
and commercialism in which men had so blindly 
put their trust. As the airships fought above, 
the visible gold supply of the world vanished 
below. An epidemic of private cornering and 
universal distrust swept the world. In a few 
weeks, money, except for depreciated paper, 
vanished, into vaults, into holes, into the walls 
of houses, into ten million hiding-places. Money 
vanished, and at its disappearance trade and 
industry came to an end. The economic world 
staggered and fell dead. It was like the stroke 
of some disease; it was like the water vanishing 
out of the blood of a living creature; it was a 
sudden, universal coagulation of intercourse. . . . 

And as the credit system, that had been the 
living fortress of the scientific civilisation, reeled 
and fell upon the millions it had held together in 
economic relationship, as these people, perplexed 
and helpless, faced this marvel of credit utterly 
destroyed, the airships of Asia, countless and 
relentless, poured across the heavens, swooped 
eastward to America and westward to Europe. 
The page of history becomes a long crescendo of 
battle. The main body of the British-Indian 


THE GREAT COLLAPSE 


359 


air-fleet perished upon a pyre of blazing antag- 
onists in Burmah; the Germans were scattered 
in the great battle of the Carpathians; the vast 
peninsula of India burst into insurrection and 
civil war from end to end, and from Gobi to 
Morocco rose the standards of the “ Jehad. ” 
For some weeks of warfare and destruction it 
seemed as though the Confederation of Eastern 
Asia must needs conquer the world, and then 
the jerry-built “modern” civilisation of China 
too gave way under the strain. The teeming and 
peaceful population of China had been “western- 
ised” during the opening years of the twentieth 
century with the deepest resentment and re- 
luctance; they had been dragooned and disci- 
plined under Japanese and European influence 
into an acquiescence with sanitary methods, 
police controls, military service, and a wholesale 
process of exploitation against which their whole 
tradition rebelled. Under the stresses of the war 
their endurance reached the breaking point, the 
whole of China rose in incoherent revolt, and the 
practical destruction of the central government 
at Pekin by a handful of British and German 
airships that had escaped from the main battles 
rendered that revolt invincible. In Yokohama 
appeared barricades, the black flag and the social 
revolution. With that the whole world became 
a welter of conflict. 

So that a universal social collapse followed, as it 
were a logical consequence, upon world-wide war. 
Wherever there were great populations, great 
masses of people found themselves without work, 


360 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


without money, and unable to get food. Famine 
was in every working-class quarter in the world 
within three weeks of the beginning of the war. 
Within a month there was not a city anywhere 
in which the ordinary law and social procedure 
had not been replaced by some form of emergency 
control, in which firearms and military executions 
were not being used to keep order and prevent 
violence. And still in the poorer quarters, and 
in the populous districts, and even here and there 
already among those who had been wealthy, 
famine spread. 


§ 3 

So what historians have come to call the Phase 
of the Emergency Committees sprang from the 
opening phase and from the phase of social 
collapse. Then followed a period of vehement 
and passionate conflict against disintegration ; 
everywhere the struggle to keep order and to 
keep fighting went on. And at the same time 
the character of the war altered through the 
replacement of the huge gas-filled airships by 
flying-machines as the instruments of war. So 
soon as the big fleet engagements were over, 
the Asiatics endeavoured to establish in close 
proximity to the more vulnerable points of the 
countries against which they were acting, fortified 
centres from which flying-machine raids could be 
made. For a time they had everything their 
own way in this, and then, as this story has told, 
the lost secret of the Butteridge machine came 


THE GREAT COLLAPSE 


361 


to light, and the conflict became equalised and 
less conclusive than ever. For these small flying- 
machines, ineffectual for any large expedition or 
conclusive attack, were horribly convenient for 
guerilla warfare, rapidly and cheaply made, 
easily used, easily hidden. The design of them 
was hastily copied and printed in Pinkerville, 
and scattered broadcast over the United States, 
and copies were sent to Europe, and there re- 
produced. Every man, every town, every parish 
that could, was exhorted to make and use them. 
In a little while they were being constructed not 
only by governments and local authorities, but 
by robber bands, by insurgent committees, by 
every type of private person. The peculiar social 
destructiveness of the Butteridge machine lay in 
its complete simplicity. It was nearly as simple 
as a motor-bicycle. The broad outlines of the 
earlier stages of the war disappeared under its 
influence, the spacious antagonism of nations and 
empires and races vanished in a seething mass of 
detailed conflict. The world passed at a stride 
from a unity and simplicity broader than that 
of the Roman Empire at its best, to as social 
fragmentation as complete as the robber-baron 
period of the Middle Ages. But this time, for 
a long descent down gradual slopes of disinte- 
gration, comes a fall like a fall over a cliff. Every- 
where were men and women perceiving this and 
struggling desperately to keep as it were a hold 
upon the edge of the cliff. 

A fourth phase follows. Through the struggle 
against Chaos, in the wake of the Famine, came 


362 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


now another old enemy of humanity — the 
Pestilence, the Purple Death. But the war does 
not pause. The flags still fly. Fresh air-fleets 
rise, new forms of airship, and beneath their 
swooping struggles the world darkens — scarcely 
heeded by history. 

It is not within the design of this book to tell 
what further story, to tell how the War in the 
Air kept on through the sheer inability of any 
authorities to meet and agree and end it, until 
every organised government in the world was as 
shattered and broken as a heap of china beaten 
with a stick. With every week of those terrible 
years history becomes more detailed and confused, 
more crowded and uncertain. Not without great 
and heroic resistance was civilisation borne 
down. Out of the bitter social conflict below 
rose patriotic associations, brotherhoods of order, 
city mayors, princes, provisional committees, 
trying to establish an order below and to keep 
the sky above. The double effort destroyed 
them. And as the exhaustion of the mechanical 
resources of civilisation clears the heavens of 
airships at last altogether, Anarchy, Famine and 
Pestilence are discovered triumphant below. The 
great nations and empires have become but 
names in the mouths of men. Everywhere there 
are ruins and unburied dead, and shrunken, 
yellow-faced survivors in a mortal apathy. Here 
there are robbers, here vigilance committees, and 
here guerilla bands ruling patches of exhausted 
territory, strange federations and brotherhoods 
form and dissolve, and religious fanaticisms be- 


THE GREAT COLLAPSE 


363 


gotten of despair gleam in famine-bright eyes. 
It is a universal dissolution. The fine order and 
welfare of the earth have crumpled like an ex- 
ploded bladder. In five short years the world 
and the scope of human life have undergone a 
retrogressive change as great as that between 
the age of the Antonines and the Europe of the 
ninth century. . . . 

§ 4 

Across this sombre spectacle of disaster goes 
a minute and insignificant person for whom per- 
haps the readers of this story have now some 
slight solicitude. Of him there remains to be 
told just one single miraculous thing. Through 
a world darkened and lost, through a civilisation 
in its death agony, our little Cockney errant went 
and found his Edna ! He found his Edna ! 

He got back across the Atlantic partly by means 
of an order from the President and partly through 
his own good luck. He contrived to get himself 
aboard a British brig in the timber trade that put 
out from Boston without cargo, chiefly, it would 
seem, because its captain had a vague idea of 
“getting home” to South Shields. Bert was able 
to ship himself upon her mainly because of the 
seamanlike appearance of his rubber boots. They 
had a long, eventful voyage; they were chased, 
or imagined themselves to be chased, for some 
hours by an Asiatic ironclad, which was pres- 
ently engaged by a British cruiser. The two 
ships fought for three hours, circling and driving 


364 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


southward as they fought, until the twilight and 
the cloud-drift of a rising gale swallowed them up. 
A few days later Bert’s ship lost her rudder and 
mainmast in a gale. The crew ran out of food 
and subsisted on fish. They saw strange air- 
ships going eastward near the Azores and landed 
to get provisions and repair the rudder at Teneriffe. 
There they found the town destroyed and two 
big liners, with dead still aboard, sunken in the 
harbour. From there they got canned food and 
material for repairs, but their operations were 
greatly impeded by the hostility of a band of men 
amidst the ruins of the town, who sniped them 
and tried to drive them away. 

At Mogador, they stayed and sent a boat 
ashore for water, and were nearly captured by 
an Arab ruse. Here too they got the Purple 
Death aboard, and sailed with it incubating in 
their blood. The cook sickened first, and then 
the mate, and presently every one was down and 
three in the forecastle were dead. It chanced to 
be calm weather, and they drifted helplessly 
and indeed careless of their fate backwards tow- 
ards the Equator. The captain doctored them 
all with rum. Nine died all together, and of the 
four survivors none understood navigation ; when 
at last they took heart again and could handle 
a sail, they made a course by the stars roughly 
northward and were already short of food once 
more when they fell in with a petrol-driven ship 
from Rio to Cardiff, shorthanded by reason of 
the Purple Death and glad to take them aboard. 
So at last, after a year of wandering Bert reached 


THE GREAT COLLAPSE 


365 


England. He landed in bright June weather, 
and found the Purple Death was there just begin- 
ning its ravages. 

The people were in a state of panic in Cardiff 
and many had fled to the hills, and directly the 
steamer came to the harbour she was boarded 
and her residue of food impounded by some 
unauthenticated Provisional Committee. Bert 
tramped through a country disorganised by 
pestilence, foodless, and shaken to the very base 
of its immemorial order. He came near death 
and starvation many times, and once he was 
drawn into scenes of violence that might have 
ended his career. But the Bert Smallways who 
tramped from Cardiff to London vaguely “ going 
home,” vaguely seeking something of his own 
that had no tangible form but Edna, was a very 
different person from the Desert Dervish who 
was swept out of England in Mr. Butteridge’s 
balloon a year before. He was brown and lean 
and enduring, steady-eyed and pestilence-salted, 
and his mouth, which had once hung open, shut 
now like a steel trap. Across his brow ran a white 
scar that he had got in a fight on the brig. In 
Cardiff he had felt the need of new clothes and 
a weapon, and had, by means that would have 
shocked him a year ago, secured a flannel shirt, 
a corduroy suit, and a revolver and fifty cartridges 
from an abandoned pawnbroker’s. He also got 
some soap and had his first real wash for thirteen 
months in a stream outside the town. The 
Vigilance bands that had at first shot plunderers 
very freely were now either entirely dispersed 


366 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


by the plague, or busy between town and cemetery 
in a vain attempt to keep pace with it. He 
prowled on the outskirts of the town for three 
or four days, starving, and then went back to 
join the Hospital Corps for a week, and so fortified 
himself with a few square meals before he started 
eastward. 

The Welsh and English countryside at that time 
presented the strangest mingling of the assurance 
and wealth of the opening twentieth century with 
a sort of Dureresque medievalism. All the gear, 
the houses and mono-rails, the farm hedges and 
power cables, the roads and pavements, the sign- 
posts and advertisements of the former order 
were still for the most part intact. Bankruptcy, 
social collapse, famine, and pestilence had done 
nothing to damage these, and it was only to the 
great capitals and ganglionic centres, as it were, 
of this State, that positive destruction had come. 
Any one dropped suddenly into the country 
would have noticed very little difference. He 
would have remarked first, perhaps, that all the 
hedges needed clipping, that the roadside grass 
grew rank, that the road-tracks were unusually 
rainworn, and that the cottages by the wayside 
seemed in many cases shut up, that a telephone 
wire had dropped here, and that a cart stood 
abandoned by the wayside. But he would still 
find his hunger whetted by the bright assurance 
that Wilder’s Canned Peaches were excellent, 
or that there was nothing so good for the break- 
fast table as Gobble’s Sausages. And then 
suddenly would come the Dureresque element,* 


THE GREAT COLLAPSE 


367 


the skeleton of a horse, or some crumpled mass 
of rags in the ditch, with gaunt extended feet and 
a yellow, purple-blotched skin and face, or what 
had been a face, gaunt and glaring and devastated. 
Then here would be a field that had been ploughed 
and not sown, and here a field of corn carelessly 
trampled by beasts, and here a hoarding torn 
down across the road to make a fire. 

Then presently he would meet a man or a woman, 
yellow-faced and probably negligently dressed 
and armed — prowling for food. These people 
would have the complexions and eyes and ex- 
pressions of tramps or criminals, and often the 
clothing of prosperous middle-class or upper- 
class people. Many of these would be eager for 
news, and willing to give help and even scraps 
of queer meat, or crusts of grey and doughy 
bread, in return for it. They would listen to 
Bert’s story with avidity, and attempt to keep 
him with them for a day or so. The virtual 
cessation of postal distribution and the collapse 
of all newspaper enterprise had left an immense 
and aching gap in the mental life of this time. 
Men had suddenly lost sight of the ends of the 
earth and had still to recover the rumour-spread- 
ing habits of the Middle Ages. In their eyes, 
in their bearing, in their talk, was the quality of 
lost and deoriented souls. 

As Bert travelled from parish to parish, and 
from district to district, avoiding as far as possible 
those festering centres of violence and despair, 
the larger towns, he found the condition of affairs 
varying widely. In one parish he would find 


368 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


the large house burnt, the vicarage wrecked, evi- 
dently in violent conflict for some suspected and 
perhaps imaginary store of food, unburied dead 
everywhere, and the whole mechanism of the 
community at a standstill. In another he would 
find organising forces stoutly at work, newly- 
painted notice boards warning off vagrants, the 
roads and still cultivated fields policed by armed 
men, the pestilence under control, even nursing 
going on, a store of food husbanded, the cattle 
and sheep well guarded, and a group of two or 
three justices, the village doctor or a farmer, 
dominating the whole place ; a reversion, in fact, 
to the autonomous community of the fifteenth 
century. But at any time such a village would 
be liable to a raid of Asiatics or Africans or such- 
like air-pirates, demanding petrol and alcohol or 
provisions. The price of its order was an almost 
intolerable watchfulness and tension. 

Then the approach to the confused problems 
of some larger centre of population and the pres- 
ence of a more intricate conflict would be marked 
by roughly smeared notices of “ Quarantine” 
or “ Strangers Shot,” or by a string of decaying 
plunderers dangling from the telephone poles 
at the roadside. About Oxford big boards were 
put on the roofs warning all air wanderers off 
with the single word, “Guns.” 

Taking their risks amidst these things, cyclists 
still kept abroad, and once or twice during Bert’s 
long tramp powerful motor cars containing masked 
and goggled figures went tearing past him. 
There were few police in evidence, but ever and 


THE GREAT COLLAPSE 


369 


again squads of gaunt and tattered soldier- 
cyclists would come drifting along, and such 
encounters became more frequent as he got out 
of Wales into England. Amidst all this wreckage 
they were still campaigning. He had had some 
idea of resorting to the workhouses for the night 
if hunger pressed him too closely, but some of 
these were closed and others converted into 
temporary hospitals, and one he came up to at 
twilight near a village in Gloucestershire stood 
with all its doors and windows open, silent as the 
grave, and, as he found to his horror by stumbling 
along evil-smelling corridors, full of unburied 
dead. 

From Gloucestershire Bert went northward to 
the British aeronautic park outside Birmingham, 
in the hope that he might be taken on and given 
food, for there the Government, or at any rate 
the War Office, still existed as an energetic fact, 
concentrated amidst collapse and social disaster 
upon the effort to keep the British flag still flying 
in the air, and trying to brisk up mayor and 
mayor and magistrate and magistrate in a new 
effort of organisation. They had brought to- 
gether all the best of the surviving artisans from 
that region, they had provisioned the park for 
a siege, and they were urgently building a larger 
type of Butteridge machine. Bert could get no 
footing at this work: he was not sufficiently 
skilled, and he had drifted to Oxford when the 
great fight occurred in which these works were 
finally wrecked. He saw something, but not very 
much, of the battle from a place called Boar 


370 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


Hill. He saw the Asiatic squadron coming up 
across the hills to the south-west, and he saw one 
of their airships circling southward again chased 
by two aeroplanes, the one that was ultimately 
overtaken, wrecked and burnt at Edge Hill. 
But he never learnt the issue of the combat as 
a whole. 

He crossed the Thames from Eton to Windsor 
and made his way round the south of London 
to Bun Hill, and there he found his brother Tom, 
looking like some dark, defensive animal in the 
old shop, just recovering from the Purple Death, 
and Jessica upstairs delirious, and, as it seemed 
to him, dying grimly. She raved of sending out 
orders to customers, and scolded Tom perpetually 
lest he should be late with Mrs. Thompson’s 
potatoes and Mrs. Hopkins’ cauliflower, though 
all business had long since ceased and Tom had 
developed a quite uncanny skill in the snaring 
of rats and sparrows and the concealment of 
certain stores of cereals and biscuits from plun- 
dered grocers’ shops. Tom received his brother 
with a sort of guarded warmth. 

“Lor!” he said, “it’s Bert. I thought you’d 
be coming back some day, and I’m glad to see 
you. But I carn’t arst you to eat anything, 
because I ’aven’t got anything to eat. . . . 
Where you been, Bert, all this time?” 

Bert reassured his brother by a glimpse of 
a partly eaten swede, and was still telling his 
story in fragments and parentheses, when he 
discovered behind the counter a yellow and for- 
gotten note addressed to himself. “ What’s this ? ” 


THE GREAT COLLAPSE 


371 


he said, and found it was a year-old note from 
Edna. “She came ’ere,” said Tom, like one who 
recalls a trivial thing, “arstin’ for you and arstin’ 
us to take ’er in. That was after the battle and 
settin’ Clapham Rise afire. I was for takin’ 
’er in, but Jessica wouldn’t ’ave it — and so she 
borrowed five shillings of me quiet like and went 

on. I dessay she’s tole you ” 

She had, Bert found. She had gone on, she 
said in her note, to an aunt and uncle who had 
a brickfield near Horsham. And there at last, 
after another fortnight of adventurous journey- 
ing, Bert found her. 


§ 5 

When Bert and Edna set eyes on one another, 
they stared and laughed foolishly, so changed they 
were, and so ragged and surprised. And then 
they both fell weeping. 

“Oh! Bertie, boy!” she cried. “You’ve come 
— you’ve come!” and put out her arms and 
staggered. “I told ’im. He said he’d kill me if 
I didn’t marry him.” 

But Edna was not married, and when pres- 
ently Bert could get talk from her, she explained 
the task before him. That little patch of lonely 
agricultural country had fallen under the power 
of a band of bullies led by a chief called Bill Gore 
who had begun life as a butcher boy and de- 
veloped into a prize-fighter and a professional 
“sport.” They had been organised by a local 
nobleman of former eminence upon the turf, 


372 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


but after a time he had disappeared, no one 
quite knew how, and Bill had succeeded to the 
leadership of the countryside, and had developed 
his teacher’s methods with considerable vigour. 
There had been a strain of advanced philosophy 
about the local nobleman, and his mind ran to 
“ improving the race” and producing the Over- 
Man, which in practice took the form of himself 
especially and his little band in moderation marry- 
ing with some frequency. Bill followed up the 
idea with an enthusiasm that even trenched 
upon his popularity with his followers. One day 
he had happened upon Edna tending her pigs, 
and had at once fallen a-wooing with great 
urgency among the troughs of slush. Edna had 
made a gallant resistance, but he was still vigor- 
ously about and extraordinarily impatient. He 
might, she said, come at any time, and she looked 
Bert in the eyes. They were back already in the 
barbaric stage when a man must fight for his love. 

And here one deplores the conflicts of truth with 
the chivalrous tradition. One would like to tell of 
Bert sallying forth to challenge his rival, of a ring 
formed and a spirited encounter, and Bert by some 
miracle of pluck and love and good fortune win- 
ning. But indeed nothing of the sort occurred. 
Instead, he reloaded his revolver very carefully, 
and then sat in the best room of the cottage by the 
derelict brickfield, looking anxious and perplexed, 
and listening to talk about Bill and his ways, and 
thinking, thinking. Then suddenly Edna’s aunt, 
with a thrill in her voice, announced the appear- 
ance of that individual. He was coming with 


THE GREAT COLLAPSE 


373 


two others of his gang through the garden gate. 
Bert got up, put the woman aside, and looked out. 
They presented remarkable figures. They wore 
a sort of uniform of red golfing jackets and white 
sweaters, football singlet and stockings and boots, 
and each had let his fancy play about his head- 
dress. Bill had a woman’s hat full of cock’s 
feathers, and all had wild, slouching cowboy 
brims. 

Bert sighed and stood up, deeply thoughtful, 
and Edna watched him, marvelling. The women 
stood quite still. He left the window, and went 
out into the passage rather slowly, and with the 
careworn expression of a man who gives his mind 
to a complex and uncertain business. “Edna!” 
he called, and when she came he opened the front 
door. 

He asked very simply, and pointing to the fore- 
most of the three, “That ’im? . . . Sure?” 
. . . and being told that it was, shot his rival in- 
stantly and very accurately through the chest. 
He then shot Bill’s best man much less tidily in 
the head, and then shot at and winged the third 
man as he fled. The third gentleman yelped, 
and continued running with a comical end-on 
twist. 

Then Bert stood still meditating, with the pistol 
in his hand, and quite regardless of the women 
behind him. 

So far things had gone well. 

It became evident to him that if he did not go 
into politics at once, he would be hanged as an 
assassin, and accordingly, and without a word to 


374 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


the women, he went down to the village public- 
house he had passed an hour before on his way to 
Edna, entered it from the rear, and confronted 
the little band of ambiguous roughs, who were 
drinking in the tap-room and discussing matri- 
mony and Bill’s affection in a facetious but en- 
vious manner, with a casually held but carefully 
reloaded revolver, and an invitation to join what 
he called, I regret to say, a “ Vigilance Committee” 
under his direction. “It's wanted about ’ere, 
and some of us are gettin’ it up.” He presented 
himself as one having friends outside, though 
indeed he had no friends at all in the world but 
Edna and her aunt and two female cousins. 

There was a quick but entirely respectful discus- 
sion of the situation. They thought him a lunatic 
who had tramped into this neighbourhood igno- 
rant of Bill. They desired to temporise until their 
leader came. Bill would settle him. Some one 
spoke of Bill. 

“ Bill’s dead,” said Bert. “I jest shot ’im. 
We don’t need reckon with ’im. ’E’s shot, and 
a red-’aired chap with a squint, ’e’s shot. We’ve 
settled up all that. There aint’ going to be no 
more Bill, ever. ’E’d got wrong ideas about 
marriage and things. It’s ’is sort of chap we’re 
after.” 

That carried the meeting. 

Bill was perfunctorily buried, and Bert’s Vigi- 
lance Committee (for so it continued to be called) 
reigned in his stead. 

That is the end of this story so far as Bert 
Smallways is concerned. We leave him with 


THE GREAT COLLAPSE 


375 


his Edna to become squatters among the clay and 
oak thickets of the Weald, far away from the 
stream of events. From that time forth life 
became a succession of peasant encounters, an 
affair of pigs and hens and small needs and little 
economies and children, until Clapham and Bun 
Hill and all the life of the Scientific Age became 
to Bert no more than the fading memory of a 
dream. He never knew how the War in the 
Air went on, nor whether it still went on. There 
were rumours of airships going and coming, and 
of happenings Londonward. Once or twice their 
shadows fell on him as he worked, but whence they 
came or whither they went he could not tell. 
Even his desire to tell died out for want of food. 
At times came robbers and thieves, at times came 
diseases among the beasts and shortness of food, 
once the country was worried by a pack of boar- 
hounds he helped to kill; he went through many 
inconsecutive, irrelevant adventures. He sur- 
vived them all. 

Accident and death came near them both ever 
and again, and passed them by, and they loved 
and suffered and were happy, and she bore him 
many children — eleven children — one after the 
other, of whom only four succumbed to the neces- 
sary hardships of their simple life. They lived 
and did well, as well was understood in those 
days. They went the way of all flesh, year by 
year. 


THE EPILOGUE 


It happened that one bright summer’s morning 
exactly thirty years after the launching of the first 
German air-fleet, an old man took a small boy to 
look for a missing hen through the ruins of Bun 
Hill and out towards the splintered pinnacles of 
the Crystal Palace. He was not a very old man ; 
he was, as a matter of fact, still within a few weeks 
of sixty-three, but constant stooping over spades 
and forks and the carrying of roots and manure, 
and exposure to the damps of life in the open-air 
without a change of clothing, had bent him into the 
form of a sickle. Moreover, he had lost most of 
his teeth, and that had affected his digestion and 
through that his skin and temper. In face and 
expression he was curiously like that old Thomas 
Smallways who had once been coachman to Sir 
Peter Bone, and this was just as it should be, for 
he was Tom Smallways the son, who formerly 
kept the little greengrocer’s shop under the 
straddle of the mono-rail viaduct in the High 
Street of Bun Hill. But now there were no green- 
grocer’s shops, and Tom was living in one of the 
derelict villas hard by that unoccupied building 
site that had been and was still the scene of his 
daily horticulture. He and his wife lived upstairs, 
and in the drawing and dining rooms, which had 
each French windows opening on the lawn, and 
376 


THE EPILOGUE 


377 


all about the ground floor generally, Jessica, who 
was now a lean and lined and baldish but still 
very efficient and energetic old woman, kept her 
three cows and a multitude of gawky hens. 

These two were part of a little community of 
stragglers and returned fugitives, perhaps a 
hundred and fifty souls of them all together, that 
had settled down to the new conditions of things 
after the Panic and Famine and Pestilence that 
followed in the wake of the War. They had come 
back from strange refuges and hiding-places 
and had squatted down among the familiar houses 
and begun that hard struggle against nature for 
food which was now the chief interest of their 
lives. They were by sheer preoccupation with 
that a peaceful people, more particularly after 
Wilkes, the house agent, driven by some obsolete 
dream of acquisition, had been drowned in the 
pool by the ruined gas-works for making inquiries 
into title and displaying a litigious turn of mind. 
(He had not been murdered, you understand, 
but the people had carried an exemplary ducking 
ten minutes or so beyond its healthy limits.) 

This little community had returned from its 
original habits of suburban parasitism to what no 
doubt had been the normal life of humanity for 
nearly immemorial years, a life of homely econo- 
mies in the most intimate contact with cows and 
hens and patches of ground, a life that breathes 
and exhales the scent of cows and finds the need 
for stimulants satisfied by the activity of the 
bacteria and vermin it engenders. Such had been 
the life of the European peasant from the dawn 


378 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


of history to the beginning of the Scientific Era, 
so it was the large majority of the people of Asia 
and Africa had always been wont to live. For 
a time it had seemed that, by virtue of machines 
and scientific civilisation, Europe was to be lifted 
out of this perpetual round of animal drudgery, 
and that America was to evade it very largely 
from the outset. And with the smash of the high 
and dangerous and splendid edifice of mechanical 
civilisation that had arisen so marvellously, back 
to the land came the common man, back to the 
manure. 

The little communities, still haunted by ten 
thousand memories of a greater state, gathered 
and developed almost tacitly a customary law 
and fell under the guidance of a medicine man or 
a priest. The world rediscovered religion and the 
need of something to hold its communities to- 
gether. At Bun Hill this function was entrusted 
to an old Baptist minister. He taught a simple 
but adequate faith. In his teaching a good 
principle called the Word fought perpetually 
against a diabolical female influence called the 
Scarlet Woman and an evil being called Alcohol. 
This Alcohol had long since become a purely 
spiritualised conception deprived of any element 
of material application ; it had no relation to the 
occasional finds of whiskey and wine in Londoners’ 
cellars that gave Bun Hill its only holidays. He 
taught this doctrine on Sundays, and on week- 
days he was an amiable and kindly old man, dis- 
tinguished by his quaint disposition to wash his 
hands, and if possible his face, daily, and with a 


THE EPILOGUE 


379 


wonderful genius for cutting up pigs. He held his 
Sunday services in the old church in the Becken- 
ham Road, and then the countryside came out 
in a curious reminiscence of the urban dress of 
Edwardian times. All the men without excep- 
tion wore frock coats, top hats, and white shirts, 
though many had no boots. Tom was partic- 
ularly distinguished on these occasions because 
he wore a top hat with gold lace about it and a 
green coat and trousers that he had found upon a 
skeleton in the basement of the Urban and Dis- 
trict Bank. The women, even Jessica, came in 
jackets and immense hats extravagantly trimmed 
with artificial flowers and exotic birds’ feathers 
— of which there were abundant supplies in the 
shops to the north — and the children (there were 
not many children, because a large proportion of 
the babies born in Bun Hill died in a few days’ 
time of inexplicable maladies) had similar clothes 
cut down to accommodate them; even Stringer’s 
little grandson of four wore a large top hat. 

That was the Sunday costume of the Bun Hill 
district, a curious and interesting survival of the 
genteel traditions of the Scientific Age. On a 
weekday the folk were dingily and curiously hung 
about with dirty rags of housecloth and scarlet 
flannel, sacking, curtain serge, and patches of old 
carpet, and went either bare-footed or on rude 
wooden sandals. These people, the reader must 
understand, were an urban population sunken 
back to the state of a barbaric peasantry, and so 
without any of the simple arts a barbaric peasantry 
would possess. In many ways they were curiously 


380 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


degenerate and incompetent. They had lost any 
idea of making textiles, they could hardly make up 
clothes when they had material, and they were 
forced to plunder the continually dwindling sup- 
plies of the ruins about them for cover. All the 
simple arts they had ever known they had lost, 
and with the breakdown of modern drainage, 
modern water supply, shopping, and the like, 
their civilised methods were useless. Their 
cooking was worse than primitive. It was a 
feeble muddling with food over wood fires in 
rusty drawing-room fireplaces ; for the kitcheners 
burnt too much. Among them all no sense of 
baking or brewing or metal-working was to be 
found. 

Their employment of sacking and such-like 
coarse material for work-a-day clothing, and their 
habit of tying it on with string and of thrusting 
wadding and straw inside it for warmth, gave 
these people an odd, “ packed” appearance, and 
as it was a week-day when Tom took his little 
nephew for the hen-seeking excursion, so it was 
they were attired. 

“So you’ve really got to Bun Hill at last, 
Teddy,” said old Tom, beginning to talk and 
slackening his pace so soon as they were out of 
range of old Jessica. “You’re the last of Bert’s 
boys for me to see. Wat I’ve seen, young Bert 
I’ve seen, Sissie and Matt, Tom what’s called after 
me, and Peter. The traveller people brought you 
along all right, eh?” 

“I managed,” said Teddy, who was a dry little 
boy. 


THE EPILOGUE 


381 


“Didn’t want to eat you on the way?” 

“They was all right/’ said Teddy. “And on 
the way near Leatherhead we saw a man riding 
on a bicycle.” 

“My word!” said Tom, “there ain’t many of 
those about nowadays. Where was he going?” 

“Said he was going to Dorking if the High Road 
was good enough. But I doubt if he got there. 
All about Burford it was flooded. We came over 
the hill, uncle — what they call the Roman Road. 
That’s high and safe.” 

“Don’t know it,” said old Tom. “But a bi- 
cycle ! You’re sure it was a bicycle? Had two 
wheels?” 

“It was a bicycle right enough.” 

“Why! I remember a time, Teddy, where 
there was bicycles no end, when you could stand 
just here — the road was as smooth as a board 
then — and see twenty or thirty coming and 
going at the same time, bicycles and moty-bicycles ; 
moty cars, all sorts of whirly things.” 

“No!” said Teddy. 

“I do. They’d keep on going by all day — 
’undreds and ’undreds.” 

“But where was they all going?” asked Teddy. 

“Tearin’ off to Brighton — you never seen 
Brighton, I expect — it’s down by the sea, used 
to be a moce ’mazing place — and coming and 
going from London.” 

“Why?” 

“They did.” 

“But why?” 

“Lord knows why, Teddy. They did. Then 


382 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


you see that great thing there like a great big 
rusty nail sticking up higher than all the houses, 
and that one yonder, and that, and how some- 
thing’s fell in between ’em among the houses. 
They was parts of the mono-rail. They went 
down to Brighton too and all day and night there 
was people going, great cars as big as ’ouses full 
of people.” 

The little boy regarded the rusty evidences 
across the narrow muddy ditch of cow-droppings 
that had once been a High Street. He was 
clearly disposed to be sceptical, and yet there 
the ruins were ! He grappled with ideas beyond 
the strength of his imagination. 

“What did they go for?” he asked; “all of 
’em?” 

“They ’ad to. Everything was on the go 
those days — everything.” 

“Yes, but where did they come from?” 

“All round ’ere, Teddy, there was people living 
in those ’ouses, and up the road more ’ouses and 
more people. You’d ’ardly believe me, Teddy, 
but it’s Bible truth. You can go on that way 
for ever and ever, and keep on coming on ’ouses, 
more ’ouses, and more. There’s no end to ’em. 
No end. They get bigger and bigger.” His 
voice dropped as though he named strange names. 
“It’s London ,” he said. 

“And it’s all empty now and left alone. All 
day it’s left alone. You don’t find ’ardly a man, 
you won’t find nothing but dogs and cats after 
the rats until you get round by Bromley and 
Beckenham, and there you find the Kentish men 


THE EPILOGUE 


383 


herding swine. (Nice rough lot they are too!) 
I tell you that so long as the sun is up it’s as still 
as the grave. I been about by day — orfen and 
orfen.” He paused. 

“And all those ’ouses and streets and ways 
used to be full of people before the War in the Air 
and the Famine and the Purple Death. They 
used to be full of people, Teddy, and then came a 
time when they was full of corpses, when you 
couldn’t go a mile that way before the stink of 
’em drove you back. It was the Purple Death 
’ad killed ’em every one. The cats and dogs and 
’ens and vermin caught it. Everything and 
every one ’ad it. Jest a few of us ’appened to 
live. I pulled through, and your aunt, though 
it made ’er lose ’er ’air. Why, you find the 
skeletons in the ’ouses now. This way we been 
into all the ’ouses and took what we wanted 
and buried moce of the people, but up that way, 
Norwood way, there’s ’ouses with the glass in the 
windows still, and the furniture not touched — 
all dusty and falling to pieces — and the bones of 
the people lying, some in bed, some about the 
’ouse, jest as the Purple Death left ’em five-and- 
twenty years ago. I went into one — me and old 
Higgins las’ year — and there was a room with 
books, Teddy — you know what I mean by books, 
Teddy?” 

“I seen ’em. I seen ’em with pictures.” 

“Well, books all round, Teddy, ’undreds of 
books, beyond rhyme or reason, as the saying goes, 
green-mouldy and dry. I was for leavin’ ’em 
alone — I was never much for reading — but ole 


384 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


Higgins he must touch ’em. ‘I believe I could 
read one of ’em now , 1 ’e says. 

“‘Not it/ I says. 

“‘I could/ ’e says, laughing, and takes one out 
and opens it. 

“I looked, and there, Teddy, was a cullud 
picture, oh, so lovely ! It was a picture of women 
and serpents in a garden. I never see anything 
like it. 

“‘This suits me/ said old Higgins, ‘to rights.’ 

“And then kind of friendly he gave the book a 
pat ” 

Old Tom Smallways paused impressively. 

“And then?” said Teddy. 

“It all fell to dus’. White dus’!” . . . He 
became still more impressive. “We didn’t touch 
no more of them books that day. Not after 
that.” 

For a long time both were silent. Then Tom, 
playing with a subject that attracted him with a 
fatal fascination, repeated, “All day long they 
lie — still as the grave.” 

Teddy took the point at last. “Don’t they lie 
o’ nights?” he asked. 

Old Tom shook his head. “Nobody knows, 
boy, nobody knows.” 

“But what could they do?” 

“Nobody knows. Nobody ain’t seen to tell — 
not nobody.” 

“Nobody?” 

“They tell tales,” said old Tom. “They tell 
tales, but there ain’t no believing ’em. I gets ’ome 
about sundown, and keeps indoors, so I can’t say 


THE EPILOGUE 


385 


nothing, can I? But there's them that thinks 
some things and them as thinks others. I've 
'eard it's unlucky to take clo'es off of 'em unless 
they got white bones. There's stories " 

The boy watched his uncle sharply. “Wot 
stories?" he said. 

“ Stories of moonlight nights and things walk- 
ing about. But I take no stock in 'em. I keeps 
in bed. If you listen to stories — Lord ! You'll 
get afraid of yourself in a field at midday." 

The little boy looked round and ceased his ques- 
tions for a space. 

“They say there's a 'og man in Beck'n'am what 
was lost in London three days and three nights. 
'E went up after whiskey to Cheapside, and lorst 
'is way among the ruins and wandered. Three 
days and three nights 'e wandered about and the 
streets kep' changing so's 'e couldn't get 'ome. 
If 'e 'adn't remembered some words out of the 
Bible 'e might 'ave been there now. All day 
'e went and all night — and all day long it was 
still. It was as still as death all day long, until 
the sunset came and the twilight thickened, and 
then it began to rustle and whisper and go pit-a- 
pat with a sound like 'urrying feet." 

He paused. 

“ Yes," said the little boy breathlessly. “ Go on. 
What then?" 

“A sound of carts and 'orses there was, and a 
sound of cabs and omnibuses, and then a lot of 
whistling, shrill whistles, whistles that froze 'is 
marrer. And directly the whistles began things 
begun to show, people in the streets 'urrying, people 
2c 


386 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


in the ’ouses and shops busying themselves, moty 
cars in the streets, a sort of moonlight in all the 
lamps and winders. People, I say, Teddy, but 
they wasn’t people. They was the ghosts of them 
that was overtook, the ghosts of them that used 
to crowd those streets. And they went past ’im 
and through ’im and never ’eeded ’im, went by 
like fogs and vapours, Teddy. And sometimes 
they was cheerful and sometimes they was ’orrible, 
’orrible beyond words. And once ’e come to 
a place called Piccadilly, Teddy, and there was 
lights blazing like daylight and ladies and gentle- 
men in splendid clo’es crowding the pavement, 
and taxicabs follering along the road. And as ’e 
looked, they all went evil — evil in the face, 
Teddy. And it seemed to ’im suddenly they saw 
* inij and the women began to look at ’im and say 
things to ’im — ’orrible — wicked things. One 
come very near ’im, Teddy, right up to ’im, and 
looked into ’is face — close. And she ’adn’t 
got a face to look with, only a painted skull, 
and then ’e see; they was all painted skulls. 
And one after another they crowded on ’im saying 
’orrible things, and catchin’ at ’im and threatenin’ 
and coaxing ’im, so that ’is ’eart near left ’is body 
for fear.” . . . 

“Yes,” gasped Teddy in an unendurable 
pause. 

“Then it was he remembered the words of Scrip- 
ture and saved himself alive. 'The Lord is my 
’Elper,’ ’e says, 'therefore I will fear nothing,’ 
and straightaway there came a cock-crowing and 
the street was empty from end to end. And after 


THE EPILOGUE 


387 


that the Lord was good to ’im and guided ’im 
We.” 

Teddy stared and caught at another question. 
“But who was the people,” he asked, “who lived 
in all these ’ouses? What was they?” 

“Gent’men in business, people with money — 
leastways we thought it was money till everything 
smashed up, and then seemingly it was jes’ paper 
— all sorts. Why, there was ’undreds of thou- 
sands of them. There was millions. I’ve seen 
that ’I Street there regular so’s you couldn’t walk 
along the pavements, shoppin’ time, with women 
and people shoppin’.” 

“But where’d they get their food and things?” 

“Bort ’em in shops like I used to ’ave. I’ll 
show you the place, Teddy, ’s we go back. People 
nowadays ’aven’t no idee of a shop — no idee. 
Plate-glass winders — it’s all Greek to them. 
Why, I’ve ’ad as much as a ton and a ’arf of pe- 
taties to ’andle all at one time. You’d open your 
eyes till they dropped out to see jest what I used 
to ’ave in my shop. Baskets of pears ’eaped up, 
marrers, apples and pears, d’licious great nuts.” 
His voice became luscious — “Benanas, oranges.” 

“What’s benanas?” asked the boy, “and 
Oranges?” 

“Fruits they was. Sweet, juicy, d’licious fruits. 
Foreign fruits. They brought ’em from Spain 
and N’ York and places. In ships and things. 
They brought ’em to me from all over the world, 
and I sold ’em in my shop. / sold ’em, Teddy! 
me what goes about now with you, dressed up in 
old sacks and looking for lost ’ens. People used 


388 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


to come into my shop, great beautiful ladies like 
you’d ’ardly dream of now, dressed up to the nines, 
and say, ‘Well, Mr. Smallways, what you got 
’smorning ? ’ and I’d say, ‘Well, I got some very 
nice C’nadian apples,’ or p’raps I got ousted marrers. 
See? And they’d buy ’em. Right off they’d 
say, ‘Send me some up.’ Lord! what a life that 
was. The business of it, the bussel, the smart 
things you saw, moty cars going by, kerridges, 
people, organ-grinders, German bands. Always 
something going past — always. If it wasn’t 
for those empty ’ouses, I’d think it all a dream.” 

“But what killed all the people, uncle?” 
asked Teddy. 

“It was a smash-up,” said old Tom. “Every- 
thing was going right until they started that War. 
Everything was going like clock-work. Every- 
body was busy and everybody was ’appy and 
everybody got a good square meal every day.” 
He met incredulous eyes. “Everybody,” he 
said firmly. “If you couldn’t get it anywhere 
else, you could get it in the workhuss, a nice ’ot 
bowl of soup called skilly, and bread better’n 
any one knows ’ow to make now, reg’lar white 
bread, gov’ment bread.” 

Teddy marvelled, but said nothing. It made 
him feel deep longings that he found it wisest to 
fight down. 

For a time the old man resigned himself to the 
pleasures of gustatory reminiscence. His lips 
moved. “Pickled Sammin!” he whispered, “an’ 
vinegar. . . . Dutch cheese, Beer! A pipe of 
terbakker.” 


THE EPILOGUE 


389 


“But ’ow did the people get killed?” asked 
Teddy presently. 

“There was the War. The War was the be- 
ginning of it. The War banged and flummocked 
about, but it didn’t really kill many people. 
But it upset things. They came and set fire to 
London and burnt and sank all the ships there used 
to be in the Thames — we could see the smoke 
and steam for weeks — and they threw a bomb 
into the Crystal Palace and made a bust-up, and 
broke down the rail lines and things like that. 
But as for killin’ people, it was just accidental if 
they did. They killed each other more. There 
was a great fight all hereabout one day, Teddy 
— up in the air. Great things bigger than fifty 
’ouses, bigger than the Crystal Palace — bigger, 
bigger than anything, flying about up in the air 
and whacking at each other and dead men failin’ 
off ’em. T’riffic ! But, it wasn’t so much the 
people they killed as the business they stopped. 
There wasn’t any business doin’, Teddy, there 
wasn’t any money about, and nothin’ to buy if 
you ’ad it.” 

“But ’ow did the people get killed ?” said the 
little boy in the pause. 

“I’m tellin’ you, Teddy,” said the old man. 
“It was the stoppin’ of business come nex’. 
Sudden, some’ow, there didn’t seem to be any 
money. There was cheques — they was a bit 
of paper written on, and they was jes’ as good as 
money — jes’ as good if they come from cus- 
tomers you knew. Then all of a sudden they 
wasn’t. I was lef’ with three of ’em and two I’d 


390 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


given change. Then it got about that five-pun’ 
notes were no good, and then the silver sort of 
went off. Gold you couldn’t get for love or — 
anything. The banks in London ’ad got it, and 
the banks was all smashed up. Everybody went 
bankrup’. Everybody was thrown out of work. 
Everybody !” 

He paused, and scrutinised his hearer. The 
small boy’s intelligent face expressed hopeless 
perplexity. 

“That’s ’ow it ’appened,” said old Tom. He 
sought for some means of expression. “It was 
like stoppin’ a clock,” he said. “Things were 
quiet for a bit, deadly quiet, except for the air- 
ships fighting about in the sky, and then people 
begun to get excited. I remember my lars’ 
customer, the very lars’ customer that ever I ’ad. 
He was a Mr. Moses Gluckstein, a city gent and 
very pleasant and fond of sparrowgrass and 
chokes, and ’e cut in — there ’adn’t been no 
customers for days — and began to talk very 
fast, offerin’ me for anything I ’ad, anything, 
petaties or anything, its weight in gold. ’E said 
it was a little speculation ’e wanted to try. ’E 
said it was a sort of bet reely, and very likely ’e’d 
lose ; but never mind that, ’e wanted to try. ’E 
always ’ad been a gambler, ’e said. ’E said I’d 
only got to weigh it out and ’e’d give me ’is 
cheque right away. Well, that led to a bit of a 
argument, perfect respectful it was, but a argu- 
ment about whether a cheque was still good, and 
while ’e was explaining there come by a lot of 
these here unemployed with a great banner they 


THE EPILOGUE 


391 


’ad for every one to read — every one could read 
those days We want Food.’ Three or four of 
’em suddenly turns and comes into my shop. 

“‘Got any food?’ says one. 

“‘No/ I says, ‘not to sell. I wish I ’ad. But 
if I ’ad, I’m afraid I couldn’t let you have it. This 
gent, ’e’s been offerin’ me ’ 

“Mr. Gluckstein ’e tried to stop me, but it was 
too late. 

“‘What’s ’e been offerin’ you?’ says a great big 
chap with a ’atchet; ‘what’s ’e been offerin’ 
you?’ I ’ad to tell. 

“‘Boys,’ ’e said, ‘’ere’s another feenancier!’ 
and they took ’im out there and then, and ’ung 
’im on a lam’pose down the street. ’E never 
lifted a finger to resist. After I tole on ’im ’e 
never said a word. ...” 

Tom meditated for a space. “First chap I ever 
sin ’ung!” he said. 

“’Ow old was you?” asked Teddy. 

“’Bout thirty,” said old Tom. 

“Why! I saw free pig-stealers ’ung before I 
was six,” said Teddy. “Father took me because 
of my birfday being near. Said I ought to be 
blooded. . . .” 

“Well, you never saw no-one killed by a moty 
car, any’ow,” said old Tom after a moment of 
chagrin. “And you never saw no dead men 
carried into a chemis’ shop.” 

Teddy’s momentary triumph faded. “No,” 
he said, “I ’aven’t.” 

“Nor won’t. Nor won’t. You’ll never see the 
things I’ve seen, never. Not if you live to be a 


392 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


’undred. . . . Well, as I was saying, that’s how 
the Famine and Riotin’ began. Then there was 
strikes and Socialism, things I never did ’old with, 
worse and worse. There was fightin’ and shootin’ 
down, and burnin’ and plunderin’. They broke up 
the banks up in London and got the gold. But 
they couldn’t make food out of gold. ’Ow did 
we get on ? Well, we kep’ quiet. We didn’t inter- 
fere with no-one and no-one didn’t interfere with 
us. We ’ad some old ’tatoes about, but mocely 
we lived on rats. Ours was a old ’ouse, full of 
rats, and the famine never seemed to bother ’em. 
Orfen we got a rat. Orfen. But moce of the 
people who lived hereabouts was too tender stum- 
micked for rats. Didn’t seem to fancy ’em. 
They’d been used to all sorts of fallals, and they 
didn’t take to ’onest feeding, not till it was too 
late. Died rather. 

“It was the famine began to kill people. Even 
before the Purple Death came along they was 
dying like flies at the end of the summer. ’Ow 
I remember it all ! I was one of the first to ’ave 
it. I was out seein’ if I mightn’t get ’old of a cat 
or somethin’, and then I went round to my bit 
of ground to see whether I couldn’t get up some 
young turnips I’d forgot, and I was took something 
awful. You’ve no idee the pain, Teddy — it 
doubled me up pretty near. I jes’ lay down by 
that there corner, and your aunt come along to 
look for me and dragged me ’ome like a sack. 

“I’d never ’ave got better if it ’adn’t been for 
your aunt. ‘Tom,’ she says to me, 'you got to 
get well,’ and I ’ad to. Then she sickened. She 


THE EPILOGUE 


393 


sickened, but there ain’t much dyin’ about your 
aunt. ‘Lor!’ she says, ‘as if I’d leave you to go 
muddlin’ along alone!’ That’s what she says. 
She’s got a tongue, ’as your aunt. But it took ’er 
’air off — and arst though I might, she’s never 
cared for the wig I got ’er — orf the old lady what 
was in the vicarage garden. 

“Well, this ’ere Purple Death, — it jes’ wiped 
people out, Teddy. You couldn’t bury ’em. And 
it took the dogs and the cats too, and the rats and 
’orses. At last every ’ouse and garden was full 
of dead bodies. London way you couldn’t go for 
the smell of them, and we ’ad to move out of the 
’I Street into that villa we got. And all the water 
run short that way. The drains and underground 
tunnels took it. Gor’ knows where the Purple 
Death come from; some say one thing and some 
another. Some said it come from eatin’ rats and 
some from eatin’ nothin’. Some say the Asiatics 
brought it from some ’I place, Thibet, I think, 
where it never did nobody much ’arm. All I 
know is it come after the Famine. And the 
Famine come after the Penic and the Penic come 
after the War.” 

Teddy thought. “What made the Purple 
Death?” he asked. 

“’Aven’t I tole you !” 

“But why did they ’ave a Penic?” 

“They ’ad it.” 

“But why did they start the War?” 

“They couldn’t stop theirselves. ’Aving them 
airships made ’em.” 

“And ’ow did the War end?” 


394 


THE WAR IN THE AIR 


“Lord knows if it’s ended, boy,” said old Tom. 
“Lord knows if it’s ended. There’s been travellers 
through ’ere — there was a chap only two summers 
ago — say it’s goin’ on still. They say there’s 
bands of people up north who keep on with it and 
people in Germany and China and ’Merica and 
places. ’E said they still got flying-machines and 
gas and things. But we ’aven’t seen nothin’ in the 
air now for seven years, and nobody ’asn’t come 
nigh of us. Last we saw was a crumpled sort of 
airship going away — over there. It was a 
littleish-sized thing and lopsided, as though it ’ad 
something the matter with it.” 

He pointed, and came to a stop at a gap in the 
fence, the vestiges of the old fence from which, in 
the company of his neighbour Mr. Stringer the 
milkman, he had once watched the South of Eng- 
land Aero Club’s Saturday afternoon ascents. 
Dim memories, it may be, of that particular after- 
noon returned to him. 

“There, down there, where all that rus’ looks so 
red and bright, that’s the gas-works.” 

“What’s gas?” asked the little boy. 

“Oh, a hairy sort cf nothin’ what you put in 
balloons to make ’em go up. And you used to 
burn it till the ’lectricity come.” 

The little boy tried vainly to imagine gas on the 
basis of these particulars. Then his thoughts re- 
verted to a previous topic. 

“But why didn’t they end the War?” 

“Obstinacy. Everybody was getting ’urt, but 
everybody was ’urtin’ and everybody was ’igh- 
spirited and patriotic, and so they smeshed up 


THE EPILOGUE 


395 


things instead. They jes' went on smeshin\ And 
afterwards they jes' got desp'rite and savige." 

“It ought to 'ave ended," said the little boy. 

“It didn't ought to 'ave begun," said old Tom. 
“But people was proud. People was la-dy-da-ish 
and uppish and proud. Too much meat and drink 
they 'ad. Give in — not them ! And after a bit 
nobody arst 'em to give in. Nobody arst 
'em. . . 

He sucked his old gums thoughtfully, and his 
gaze strayed away across the valley to where the 
shattered glass of the Crystal Palace glittered in 
the sun. A dim large sense of waste and irrev- 
ocable lost opportunities pervaded his mind. He 
repeated his ultimate judgment upon all these 
things, obstinately, slowly, and conclusively, his 
final saying upon the matter. 

“You can say what you like," he said. “It 
didn't ought ever to 'ave begun." 

He said it simply — somebody somewhere 
ought to have stopped something, but who or 
how or why were all beyond his ken. 










AN ACCOUNT OF SOCIALISM 


By H. G. WELLS 

New Worlds 
for Old 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.50; by mail, $1.61 


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t 

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